A Chronicle to downfall
by Sapfarah
Summary: Claire Redfield, survivor of Raccoon City, must visit the corrupt Sutacora Sassa and prevent the revival of the Nightmare.
1. Life, Death or somewhere in between

A Chronicle to Downfall   
A fanfiction mainly based on Resident Evil  
by Sapfarah ( sapfarah@geocities.com )  
http://www.geocities.com/sapfarah.geo/chronicle.htm  
  
  
Chapter 1 - Life, death, or somewhere in between.  
"Think of eyes that open without will, without desire..."  
  
Recorded message of June 12th, 2002   
(accompanied by written record found in the files of Umbrella)  
Tape signed by Ms Claire Redfield, Sergeant.  
  
"This is Sergeant Claire Redfield of the S.T.A.R.S. giving   
report on the events that occurred in Raccoon City on August the 16th,   
in the year 1998.  
A sudden raid of man-eating, biologically unidentified, human   
resembling creatures plagued the city. The outbreak came without a   
warning and the impact of the devastation was alike enormous. Of the   
citizens, very few survived, of those survivors more died later,   
infected by what seemed to be ultra developed bacteria and related   
infections.  
The connection of the chief of Raccoon City Police Department,   
mr Brian Irons, is still under investigation. It appears the chief had   
deeper connections with Umbrella Co. Ltd. as well as more associations   
with underground groups.  
  
[Descriptive report is given...]  
  
Having studied the evidence taken from the province of Sutacora   
Sassa, the deduction leads to confirming similarities of the current   
epidemic, causing suspicions that we are regretfully dealing with   
Umbrella and its experiments yet once more...  
Investigation will be immediately ordered in which I will   
personally travel to Sutacora Sassa and find out the extend of the   
possible danger."  
  
  
To: Ms Claire Redfield, Sergeant of the S.T.A.R.S.  
Date: June 19th, 2002.  
Regarding your demand concerning the Sutacora Sassa events.  
  
Dear Ms Redfield,  
  
I have gone through your letter demanding to be in charge of the   
investigation over the recent events of Sutacora Sassa, to discover   
whether there is indeed a similar biohazard outbreak.  
To your demand the approval is given. You will be booked on a   
flight to Sutacora Sassa on the coming Thursday the 20th of June. The   
authorities have been contacted and you will be received and given all   
help you should require.  
On behalf of the entire S.T.A.R.S. personnel, allow me to wish   
you success in accomplishing your mission.  
  
Sincerely,  
[signature]  
[name]  
  
  
"It is so weird that I'll be occupying myself with those things   
again after all these years... but I suppose, you don't mess with   
Umbrella once and expect to get just as easily away with it...  
It isn't over... Just as I had told Leon back then, when we   
managed to escape a factory about to blow up in our face with that   
train and away from a Raccoon City more dead than alive, it wasn't   
over... not even close. Only, even my frightful experiences in that   
brief visit to my once beloved and very beautiful in its way hometown,   
could have never prepared me for this...  
And Leon...  
I still remember the events vividly from that day when I locked   
my apartment in the campus and with just a change of clothes I rode my   
bike, heading for my hometown...  
I was a tomboy. I have always been. Well, with a brother like   
Chris there isn't much alternative. If Chris intended to practice his   
chokeholds on me, I could either shrill until my throat hurt, which   
would anyway, or fight back. In a place like Raccoon City, most girls   
fight back. You see, where I come from, we don't grow up with Barbie's   
model. We play hide and seek, chasing and even soccer with the guys,   
in the same mud. It's not common for a girl, especially with a brother   
to have a doll that is still in playable condition. I surely didn't,   
therefore my games were respectively modified to receive less damage.  
I was a tomboy before I knew and by the time my friends   
dismissed their zip quilottes and loose T-shirts for womanly dresses   
and fancy hairdos, I found myself standing on my own, surrounded by a   
bunch of soccer and pinball addict teenage boys who no longer wanted   
little Claire kicking the ball around with them. Yes, it was a pretty   
lonely age but what was I to do? I reformed gradually and got a couple   
of close girlfriends of my own as an act of survival but somehow, I   
still was different. While other girls went frantic at the hint of a   
mouse in the room, I could only find curiosity to see if mice are   
really as cute as they are said to be and I didn't like the new way my   
old playmates regarded me when I showed up in a neat dress.   
Gladly, by then, Chris had gone over the 'tease-your-lil-  
sister' era and became more than the brother my friends confessed they   
longed for, making an irreplaceable friend. He was understanding where   
my father was at loose ends and my mother even regretful and with his   
support I learned not to try and mould myself to fit in a model that   
wasn't me. On my eighteenth birthday, he went as far as gifting me   
with a combat knife that I still have and a gift that was meant to be   
the greatest I was given all my life, for it really found its good   
use, when it was mostly needed. Sometimes I ponder that this gift   
resembles my brother to perfection. Perhaps making no sense in the   
daily course of events but making a strong support, irreplaceable at   
times of need. The day when he gave me the knife, on my eighteenth   
birthday, he only stayed a little in my party and then spent some time   
out in the porch with Alicia, under the stars. I saw him only the next   
day but from the moment he had left, the party had been of no real   
significance.  
That brother was whom I was looking for that day, a great friend   
of life and one who happened to be amusing too, without knowing the   
newest jokes around, even though he fell in the same situation I hated   
upon my father, of saying a joke he would laugh at by himself,   
although very few really noticed. He had his way with women, but he   
was scared of commitment, so I understand why he argued with Jill all   
the time, even though I falsely believed he wasn't serious about her,   
as he wasn't serious for plenty things in his life, college being one   
of them. While I chose to continue my studies, he didn't give it a   
second thought before amazing our parents once again by declaring his   
decision to join S.T.A.R.S.. Not that he wasn't bright or anything,   
for to be a STARS member a certain reasoning ability is required. It   
was what he wanted to do. Perhaps just a boyish infatuation about guns   
and dangerous missions, leftovers of childhood, were his reasons but   
whatever they were, he still had it his way. Undaunted, he took the   
exams and was accepted in the STARS and might I add, with flying marks   
too.  
Parents act funny at such situations... They are anxious in the   
beginning but how they swell with pride when their children are   
successful... When Chris got his results mother screamed from joy and   
father invited the entire family of uncles and cousins for a huge   
dinner. As the time was going by and Chris got ever more distinctions,   
he was always mentioned at least once every day and every time mother   
went for groceries she would have another thing of her son to tell.   
Dad was as proud as a father could be and I was struggling with my   
marks for college. Photography, my own aspiration, was out of the   
question yet I developed my skills in it whilst studying later on and   
it is funny that it came of use during that period of time... I didn't   
care to be a STARS member then, so I could only study. Well, I made it   
to college but I still feel a distant taste of envy. My success was   
not greeted with the same gladness Chris's acceptance to the STARS   
was. Perhaps since for him, not only did they consider STARS as a bad   
choice but his success was not even expected, so the joy was greater,   
or perhaps since he fought more to get his goal... as though I hadn't   
studied. No matter. I had been taken into college. I was in my senior   
year and with a weekend ahead, I decided I wanted to spend some time   
with Chris. My roommates had gone to San Francisco bay, leaving me   
alone for the weekend; not my idea of having fun. So, I jumped on my   
bike with a change of clothes, that being all I needed and off I went   
for the longest weekend I was to ever face...  
  
I reached Raccoon City by twilight and for someone wearing   
shorts, it was rather cold. It wasn't wise to travel the highway on a   
1000cc motorbike, dressed like a baby doll, but I intended to pass   
Chris a message. It had been long since we spent time together. That   
was thanksgiving three years ago and during that time, we only   
received a scarce letter once every now and then with a picture   
occasionally enclosed and he would only visit briefly, for a day the   
most and as it happened, most of these times, I would be in college.   
It was a good time to remember a few things...  
My clothes, a pink denim vest and a matching, very short pair of   
trousers, despite their sweet colour were fit for a marine even; the   
vest had buckles especially designed to hold a combat knife and the   
whole outfit was a reminder of that last time Chris and I were   
together, where we even walked together downtown, maybe for the first   
time since we were one and four respectively and our battles hadn't   
started yet. By then he had had a big change of character. He was more   
confident, more composed and even sensitive and caring - must have   
been the effect of spending time away from home. We were actually out   
for shopping and ended up in a unisex Lois Jeans department... It was   
the most popular store around then. Chris bought himself a brown   
leather jacket and I had that pink outfit, for the sole reason that   
both garments bore on their back a female fairy-looking angel and   
above, in calligraphic letters it read 'Made in Heaven'. Previously,   
even a tiny similarity in our dressing would have had us both berserk   
only this time, we had actually chosen the clothes for the exact   
reason. Chris said nothing, just cast a shy smile to me and I answered   
back. It was a silent commitment and after so long, it was a good time   
to bring it back.  
I took off my helmet as soon as I locked the bike and with a   
deep breath, I looked around to see how my beautiful hometown had   
changed... only at that first glance, not even the emptiness was   
foreboding. New buildings had spawned, ones with large fronts of glass   
and iron and the streets were covered in new asphalt. The signs on the   
roads were replaced by new ones and the cars had dramatically   
increased... I was about to step down, only then it seemed like the   
silence, lurking around, watching had drained my will to do so.  
I had stopped before a Diner, a newly built one too, leaving my   
things on my bike... I didn't take a look back at her. I don't know if   
it was a signal, but strangely I remember a distant sound of   
clattering metals, right as I was about to open the glass door before   
me. Now, I don't even know why I remember it.  
The Diner greeted me with more emptiness, greatly uncommon for   
my hometown. Naturally times change but not so drastically in a place   
like Raccoon City where a weekend night out definitely included a stop   
by the Diner and that evening, the Diner was empty. It was the right   
time for people to rush in for their coffee and chit chat and yet,   
there wasn't one soul. That's when I first sensed the taste of fear.   
The Diner wasn't just empty but had apparent signs of being abandoned   
and in great hurry too. The tables were messed up, napkins and spoons   
thrown at all directions and everywhere the situation was the same,   
the more I advanced inside.  
My investigating greeting was even muffled in that silence and   
by that time I noticed that the smell in my nostrils wasn't one of   
coffee or those delicious apple pies they baked over there but   
something horrible, something repugnant, much like what smells when   
one suffers a stuffed nose. It is only now I know that it was the   
scent of rotten flesh but then I had no idea where I was getting   
into...  
After all this time, the memory of the next moments has turned   
vague but I can recall the fright very clearly. I think I walked   
towards the counter, I'm not certain if I indeed heard a slurping   
noise that directed me to approach, only that as I could peak beyond,   
I had literally froze to place. My legs didn't obey me anymore and I   
nearly lost consciousness and there was nowhere I could get a grip   
from. I thought I had seen the limit of cannibalism - for what do you   
call it when you see a man bent over a corpse, voraciously chewing at   
the dead flesh? - but for once more, I would be wrong. Right now... I   
keep an open margin for further fright...  
I stammered one more greeting, to get the cannibal's notice and   
when he lifted his head from his meal... Will I ever come to recall   
that moment, one of the many without my heart skipping? Although the   
man was bald and all his visible skin was of an awful shape, as if he   
suffered from leprosy, it was only as he faced me that I realised this   
thing, whatever you call it, was not human. I merely restrained a   
scream to a loud inhale as I stepped back for this thing, with its   
mouth spoiled with blood and yellowing eyeballs hardly contained into   
his sockets turned all its attention on me. I don't know if it could   
sense my fear but I doubt he realised I was too a human, as I don't   
believe he either cared of what I thought. It just walked on,   
stretching two decaying hands towards me and a faint voice left his   
probably perforated lounges. I know now it wasn't the sight it   
presented that scared me so deeply, as the intention to get me, no   
matter what. It had no will, I could see his eyes to be deprived from   
any life or emotion but it would get after me with even despair, to   
suck up my blood the moment it could.  
I was walking away, trying to even reason with it and the closer   
it walked, the uglier it appeared, less human if it ever was before. I   
had my combat knife fastened on my pink denim vest, attached for the   
sole intention of impressing Chris when he would see me and remind him   
of so much we shared, but not for a moment did I even think of pulling   
it out and defend myself. It was only as my back was stuck on the big   
window that in a startle I turned to poundings coming from outside.   
God, there were more. More zombies, starved for living flesh, ramming   
their deadened hands, leaving stains of decomposing skin as they did,   
hollering lowly at me. Panic seized me right there and I fleeted as   
fast as I could to the distant door I thought I'd never reach.  
The worse thing about that day was the repeated shocks I   
received. Just as I pulled the door open, I stopped out of my mind...   
I never expected to see anyone or anything behind it, I didn't   
particularly wish for it but neither did I have the gap of reasoning   
to be glad it wasn't a monster...  
There he was and he had a gun pointing right on me, just as   
startled perhaps, aiming at what could be another opponent. How I wish   
I could look back at our first meeting and say 'oh my, wasn't he such   
a god!' but then, with a hungry zombie at your hind, you don't come to   
think that a stranger pointing a gun at you has beautiful hair of   
crimson that a ray of light would be reflected as gold upon them, nor   
do you notice his divine blue eyes, even if they are intensely staring   
at you, twice as seductive when the basic instinct of survival   
enhances them. You only put up your hands, shouting not to shoot you   
and when he orders you to get down, understanding that he is your only   
possible rescue, you just do as he says and hope he doesn't miss. I   
fell on four and over my head, the gun exploded. A thud told me the   
monster chasing me had fallen. Perhaps not for too long either.  
I looked once at the lying mass that used to be a living human   
and then at him. His face was resolute and comforting, in the way a   
policeman's face ought to be as he stretched his hand at me... I   
didn't realise then he was only a young boy of my age, just as scared   
as I was but I knew how courageous he was to take the responsibility   
of engaging himself with the protection of my life. He told me to   
follow him and nodded with his head. He didn't have to tell me twice   
and immediately as he helped me up, I ran with him outside and into no   
safety.  
Coming to think about it, we were doomed. How long could we keep   
running and how far could we go? Supposing we could be faster than the   
plodding zombies, how were we to cope with fatigue, increased by   
fright? One thing I hate about zombies. They feel no pain and no   
exhaustion. They do have limited stamina but until they reach their   
limit, they don't lose endurance or persistence at the very least.   
They give a desperate chase and you almost think they are pleading for   
you to hold back and serve them meal, yet without malice nor with any   
intent other than survival... They could wear us out and although they   
weren't conscious of it, they would.  
We were fortunate to find a police car nearby, unlocked and with   
the keys in, as it is so common in Raccoon City, where criminality   
rates are next to nothing but I don't think it was good faith that had   
the poor officer leaving his car unlocked. I sat on the second   
driver's seat, trying to find some breath, even that of air diluted   
with decompose, not knowing if it was time I started believing in   
fate.  
During that break I was blabbing incoherently, foolishly trying   
to get Leon's attention, only to understand immediately that he wasn't   
one to lose it so easily in a tough situation but neither was he   
interested in a talk. He cut me off abruptly and I found myself   
confused. He seemed embarrassed at his harshness but then in a time   
like that, courtesy is completely forgone. Later on, both of us would   
lose more humanitarian feelings when our guns would be pointed against   
living dead and monsters, firing with no regret and as fast as it   
went.  
It was thanks to Leon that I searched the glove box, finding a   
loaded handgun inside. Right then I was grateful to Chris that I   
wasn't an ordinary girl to whom guns are a mystery if not a   
reprehensible agent of death and took it. Not before time either. One   
of those zombies had managed to creep into the car and dormant while   
we took off, woke up by the smell of flesh and attacked us. It was the   
living cadaver of a youth, with the strength of the last despair but   
Leon acted fast, shooting it to proper death without smashing the car   
and us on a wall. It wasn't as lucky either. He crushed on a road   
sign. Was it irony that the sign read the direction to the Police?  
The car being damaged, we hadn't gotten off, afraid to step   
outside, not until in the rear view mirror I saw in the distance a mad   
lorry running out of control towards us. I still don't know how we   
managed to both bounce off the car and right before it was shattered   
to pieces but as I got up, looking behind me to see a fire wall and   
hear Leon's anguished voice calling me behind it, I realised I was on   
my own. The flaming lorry had blocked us apart and our only hope was   
the police station. There was no time for desperate attempts and   
farewells so with a trembling heart, I tried to sound assuring as I   
said I would make it there, hoping that I was to reach there as one   
still among the living... To that moment I completely forgot Leon and   
the reason why I was here but not the urge to run like hell and hurry   
too, before any zombies would meet me and now I think about it, before   
the lorry might have exploded. The nightmare had just begun...  
To think that I shut my eyes during those cheesy horror movies   
or when there was a scene of slashing flesh... What I was faced with   
was a street with hungry zombies, all coming at me from all   
directions, even from the burning cars. Their dehydrated bodies caught   
the fire but their pace was steady, their hunger unaffected. 'Don't   
shut your eyes now,' I whispered to myself and begun running to avoid   
them.  
It wasn't that hard if I come to think of it now that I know and   
even then, if I had clarity of mind to see they were way slower than I   
was, this ought to have been easy but not with a beating heart and   
senses in red alert. One more thing. Don't go too close to zombies.   
When that happens, they get a burst of speed, since they don't care if   
they will fall and throw all of them upon you. Their nails dive into   
your flesh and they prepare for a full bite. It's not easy to get away   
once they get you for their hold is desperate and they throw all their   
weight upon you. They stink badly too and all you think of is getting   
the hell away. I shook violently until they let go and fortunately,   
they didn't balance too well. Once I got rid of one holding me, I   
pushed it upon another and they fell like a game of domino, only to be   
caught by another... the damn things never came at one... They never   
give up and if all desire was gone from them, it was entirely replaced   
by the will to follow their prey anywhere.  
There were times I saw my flesh being torn away and times when   
bits of their rotten tissue stuck upon me and once a nearly decomposed   
hand still clung from where it had clutched, even as it was torn off   
the body carrying it... That was enough to hamper my courage, even   
without the intolerable pain from the wounds I received... The pain of   
a zombie scar is not only the scar itself but the stinging filth that   
enters your tissues. It's acidulous and even as it hurts, you have to   
scratch it until you rip the entire piece off and along is the fear of   
infection or even slow death, should no other zombie find you and   
consume you while you're still fresh... Right now, thinking that the   
zombie's body is all covered with itchy wounds... I understand why   
Chris insisted they should be shot at once. We Are doing them a favor.  
I soon had got me a few wounds and I was exhausted when I   
reached a gunshop. I opened the door and shut it behind me, falling   
breathless upon it. My lounges hurt and my skin itched awfully. I was   
this time startled by a human being... He was the shop's owner, aiming   
a bowgun at me... Poor fellow... he had already been bitten and he was   
frightened to death...  
He was the common type of man you find around in Raccoon City.   
Sturdy with evident signs of plentiful eating and beer drinking, with   
his crude courtly manner, even into danger. I still don't believe he   
had actually called me 'baby' as he apologised for pointing his bowgun   
at me, but he wasn't in a better shape either. I told him where I was   
going to and when he stated that he wasn't going anywhere outside his   
shop, I asked for any help he could get me, bullets, medication and he   
was so kind as to allow me and take ammo from his shelves... 'Take   
them now and pay me later, darling' he had said...  
He had gone to lock the door where I came in from. I gathered   
some boxes of ammo when the windows shattered and all of the glass   
collapsed right before him... I jumped in surprise- it was when I   
realised that zombies feel absolutely no pain, for the damn things   
practically used their bodies to break in. I saw the poor man attacked   
by what, five, six zombies? His bowgun didn't help him either, for he   
was too frightened and lost his shot as he too was too close to run   
away. I screamed but they had already fallen upon him and heard him   
yelling while starved claws and teeth ripped him off alive...  
I pointed my gun at them and shouting I begun shooting. I hit   
some while they plunged their face into warm pools of blood that was   
splashing up, others that didn't want to fight over food moved towards   
me. I moved back and shot at them, there actually was blood still   
running through their rotten veins and when the last of them was on   
the ground I ran to the man...  
God what a horrible sight he was!  
I don't know what I find the most horrendous of it all, the   
prospect of possibly having ended up like that or the fact that the   
poor guy had offered me shelter and now was gone. That moment, I   
thought of nothing, just grabbed the bowgun and pulled it, his grip   
upon it was still strong and I had to shake it off... I was tired and   
frightened to death but I went on through the back door.  
The narrow passage of the back exit was filthy and echoing the   
desperate calls of those zombies... How many were they? Facts told me   
later that a good forty-seven percent of the population had become the   
living dead and only a good four percent survived... The rest were   
either consumed or ended their lives one way or the other. The entire   
city was wide awake for zombies hate daylight and have excellent view   
at dark as well as fine olfactory senses... how do they make it with   
that stench? This was the road I had to take. A route of life or   
death... or somewhere in between.  
It was a long way to the police station and I never believed I   
would actually see those gates before me... I ran through that narrow   
street, past a basketball court, tried all ways in guess or die   
frantic attempts, struggling against hungry zombies who no longer felt   
the pain and the exhaustion that had come over me. When I reached   
there, I was a complete wreck, staggering close to fainting, only   
walking from a faint desire to survive... 'Let me live, let me live',   
I was mumbling to myself behind trembling teeth, blood running over my   
hands and even legs, blinding me as it poured before my face. I still   
don't know where I found the strength to push open the gates, stagger   
all the way to the courtyard and make it to the entrance. I pushed the   
door to the police station open and found myself into the big front   
hall, enormous and majestic, entirely forsaken. There at the doorstep,   
I fainted.  
I don't know how long I've been unconscious but it hadn't been   
much, or I would have mutated myself... I woke up by a loud blast and   
leaped in a startle. My teeth were clattering and my entire body was   
viciously trembling and I didn't dare to imagine what that explosion   
was. I used all my strength to resume myself. 'No... I cannot let   
myself!' I mumbled and forced myself up. I was all alone. In despair I   
realised Leon wasn't there. No one was there. I dared not call out   
because the echo of my voice as a reply in the emptiness would kill   
me. For a moment I stopped just looking at that impressive building   
that could have been anything but a police station. Enormous halls   
dressed in marble and luxurious wooden embroidery, fine staircases and   
even a statue of a maiden, a splendid piece of art. This place could   
even remind of medieval castles, such as can be seen in Europe, or so   
my memory tells me.  
In truth, the building of the RPD wasn't always a public place.   
It used to be the house of a senator from the time when telegraph only   
started spreading throughout the land and slavery was the major issue.   
Many stories went between us children about ghosts in this house,   
Chris always said he had seen ghosts through the windows and even   
though he never admitted it, his friends and himself never came   
anywhere closer to the mansion than their hideout behind the fence,   
where they spied. It had been abandoned for a long time, until, almost   
eight years ago, the major decided to restore it and move the RPD   
headquarters there. I always wondered how Chris should feel, having to   
work in the place he dreaded as a child... I could have had such fun   
reminding him...  
A reminder of those memories was swirling in my head then and I   
prayed I wouldn't leave my last breath in this place. Anywhere else,   
even in the streets would have been better. As I dragged my steps to   
the main desk over some steps, I heard a faint moan behind a door... I   
halted shivering, until I realised this was someone still living...   
Someone who might be able to help...  
I entered an office and I saw someone indeed alive... A young   
black police officer lying against a closet, his clothes doused in   
blood, reeking of zombie's saliva, his skin a carved pattern, far   
worse than I was. I ran to him but he didn't have strength to even   
raise his head... His voice was feeble as it stammered about zombies   
and survivors, pleading I should help them. My head was spinning   
knowing there were more of them around, realising that not even here   
was safe. But I had to go on, while I still could. In this discussion   
that none of us was fit to comprehend, the young officer pointed his   
gun at me, in a desperate attempt to force me start the seeking of   
survivors and any kind of help. I wished I could just sit beside him   
and stay together, although that would have been the slow transform of   
both of us into zombies, where the first would consume the other...   
Clenching my heart, I moved out as fast as I could get. The door   
behind me was locked and I had no other alternative but move on...  
Sometimes I keep telling myself in regret... If he hadn't locked   
up, maybe I would have managed to cure him... That is perhaps the most   
devastating part... It's a thought I realised all of us the survivors   
are haunted by... It's one belief you can never get over, that perhaps   
you could have saved this one too, that you could have saved even one   
more... The constant chase of that thought, that maybe there was a way   
to have rescued one more living and you hadn't, that thought just   
won't perish and the memory remains in your head as one more face you   
do not see and do not recognise, just like the numberless more   
others... One more soul, doomed to that curse, one with no face,   
residing into your head and although you cannot see it, their wails   
are constantly roaming your mind.  
There was a very dizzying period of time afterwards, during   
which, as I fought to order my weakened steps to the main desk from   
where I could unlock the doors, I learned first hand the full   
experience of the living death. It was nauseating, I was urged to   
throw up but somehow the disgusting savour was swallowed back and   
stuck into my stomach, the floor lost orientation and the head was   
swelling as though the brain was a bubble increasing and it would blow   
up. My skin was searing badly, worse than when I went through 'the   
chicken pocks' and I had them badly, I had 'spots' literally   
everywhere, inside my throat even and on my butt; I couldn't sit, my   
fingers and toes were swollen but this was far worse. The weakness was   
even worse; I stumbled dragging every step. I still don't know how I   
managed to pull it through to the computer and unlock all doors   
fastened as the last means of security, enclosing dead and alive   
equally.  
Heading for the closest door, the gun was nearly slipping from   
my hand and surely I couldn't use it if I had to, I made it open and   
found myself in something like the waiting room, where there were some   
desks, where tickets and minor penalties are being paid or negotiated.   
I nearly fell upon a small desk on a corner and I don't know what   
urged me to open it but when I did, I was more than grateful for the   
long hours I spent on lockpick training, another skill I taught myself   
when I was supposed to be studying, bored out of my mind and unable to   
concentrate on my notes, which proved useful.  
Distorted as my vision was, my eyes wetted at the sight. In the   
drawer I found, what joy, a cool spray container... I grabbed it with   
shaky hands and as soon as I made out 'First Aid' upon it, I uncapped   
it and succeeding on the second attempt, I showered myself with it in   
great hurry, more on the shoulders and legs where refractory bites   
were contrived. The cold gas stung but fell soothing upon my wounds   
and in a few minutes I could breathe again without effort. At that   
moment, I sat back and cried from joy. I was still alive...  
When I stood up again I was no longer tottering. I was alive and   
planned to remain so, at least for a few more years. I immediately   
started looking at everything that might be of any help. No telephones   
or anything telling people had been here anytime recently. Strangely,   
fear had left me by then... I was once more confident at myself, armed   
and ready for everything, partly because I thought zombies would never   
get me here, but because I had a fully loaded gun at hand. I guess I'm   
much like Chris and I realise it only now, certain that it was the   
same sensation of confidence he pursued when he joined the STARS, the   
perception that if he had to face a tough situation, he would be   
ready.  
It turned out that I was not.  
As I walked on and started looking for any survivors like that   
police officer had suggested, or for any reason that would state the   
RPD a more favoured place to stay than the streets... all I remember   
was a swift move of something passing outside the window. It looked   
like a grotesque mass of disgusting colour, moving very fast, like air   
even, as if it was a mountain of flesh streaming by.  
It wasn't as big, but I guess, if you're under anxiety and the   
scenes change so fast, you don't get a clear perception. I saw what   
that was, when I walked on a little more, in a long, deserted   
corridor. The windows were shattered; not a good sign.  
I remember what made me walk to find it... A constant dripping,   
seeming to change position. Indeed something dripped. Blood. My first   
guess was that the watering system had soaked blood and that a pipe   
was leaking... but as I looked up, I saw that the blood trickled from   
the mouth of a monstrous thing.  
Whatever it had been previously, it now had four limbs like a   
human, the correspondence comes to mind since the creature had almost   
the same size as an average man, but it moved like a huge spider with   
the help of claws that kept it attached to the ceiling from where it   
surmised me... It also had a head and that too more or less reminded   
of a human one but the real horror of it was that the brain was   
visible... In fact, the muscles, the bones and intestines, everything   
that should be interior was visible. This thing had no skin covering   
it and neither did it have eyes now that I recall. It was disgusting   
in every way you looked at it.  
A long trail of slobber poured through a wide mouth of jaws and   
no lips and I would have gladly retched, as it missed me for an inch.   
I walked backwards when the disgusting creature fell from the ceiling   
and landed before my feet, certainly saving myself from its attack   
from above.   
At times of need the most amazing amounts of bravery and   
smartness tend to jump up and am I glad my case was not an exception.   
I moved away as the freakish creature reached a long clawed hand-like   
protrusion for me, in time to avoid. Fastening myself, in a snapping   
movement I ran by it and nearly stumbled on my feet, luckily I didn't   
fall. A horse-like fearful shriek told me that it wouldn't give up on   
me and with my heels reaching for my head I dashed to the far end   
door. I made it just on time to the next room and now I don't want to   
think what would otherwise happen had the door been locked... I had a   
gun and a bowgun, but no courage to use either of them.  
I fell heavily upon the door immediately as I slammed it close,   
I heard behind me the banging of the creature falling upon it and its   
maddened shrieks, then claws scraping it. My heart was beating   
insanely and my trembling hands grabbed the bowgun hanging at my   
shoulder. I wouldn't be fit to use it as I blocked the door with my   
weight, silently praying. After a short while, the beating ended...   
and I looked up ahead to see a long dark corridor stretching ahead,   
the windows hastily boarded up...  
I couldn't go back. I didn't dare to move forward. I checked my   
ammo and it was little if I intended to survive, but I had no   
alternative. I equipped my weapons and in a heartbeat I moved on,   
cautiously so I would notice a feather falling should I have to,   
hoping what I had seen before would be the last I would ever see. The   
funny thing is... I once more thought it was the worst I ought to   
fear.  
  
The quietness of the corridor was more frightening than any   
shriek could have been. The windows were meagrely shuttered in a last   
act of despair. I walked on, gun at hand, cursing my feet for making   
noise on the dust and splinters on the floor. This whole thing was   
like those corridors that have leaped out from the most successful   
horror movies... Somewhere there I came across the briefing room. It   
was in the same discarded disorder as the Diner: chairs thrown down,   
papers all over the floor, a fan pointlessly rotating... no survivors   
here and nothing but a logbook, describing in perfection the monster I   
had encountered a little before. Those poor souls didn't know that   
they had just witnessed the effects of the G-Virus on a human being.   
Being a far more powerful mutilator than it's predecessor, the T-  
Virus, when subject came in contact with it, underwent a biological   
cancerous evolution, in which the body inflated and produced limbs   
clawed in large bony fangs. In the 'licker's' case, it had given the   
poor soul fangs on hands and feet and alike, for some reason unknown,   
it had turned the tongue in a powerful weapon that could tear into   
flesh... The centre of balance was disordered and the mutated person   
had to walk on four whereas it had gained the ability to climb walls   
and ceilings. Yet, the mutilation had made its effect clear. The skin   
was entirely gone from the body and the brain, although as tissue had   
too strengthened, was open to view. That much I had learned later on,   
as I had learned that the brain's exposure was the reason that drove   
those creatures to being so aggressive as it was the reason of their   
brief living. When I just had at hand that report, desperately written   
by an officer as means of warning, I had merely laughed in despair at   
a warning given only too late... Licker... Yeh, thank you very much.   
Yet I took the report with me and later it provided enough evidence   
for the case.  
What I had no way of knowing then was that the existence of the   
licker indicated connection of the RPD building to the sewers and   
ultimately the very laboratory where the experiments of Umbrella were   
carried out. Everything, from the mansion where the outbreak started   
to the building of the RPD were ingenuously connected through the   
sewers. Once the first laboratory was contaminated and blown up, all   
that happened was to actually let the viruses go loose around. Mice   
and inferior beings transferred the virus and soon the entire city   
suffered... The monsters broke loose, eating one another and people   
alike. Through the sewers the G-Virus surfaced, the world turned into   
Mayhem and I was right into it.   
I found nothing more in either of those rooms, other than a few   
bullet cartridges and taking a deep breath in the foul air, I took the   
decision to walk back outside in the corridor. No surprise greeted me,   
not that it meant much either. I knew by then how danger was still   
lurking in the building of the RPD, the weak shelter I had picked for   
my life and the only reason I kept on walking in those corridors was   
the hope of finding Leon alive and together we could plan our escape.   
Or at least more weapons, any means of survival at all...  
I really needed my bike right then... Sometimes I still miss it   
now...  
My steps were marked by the debris on the floor and the gun at   
my hand was ready to fire... I soon realised I had better made good   
use of it, as there were zombies trapped in the building of the Police   
station. I thought I would be able to hear them but I was wrong. No I   
did hear them but I didn't realise it wasn't just the wind coming   
through broken windows I was hearing.  
I don't know how they found their way inside in the first place   
but I believe I'm not wrong to assume they broke in through the   
boarded windows and crept inside. A zombie is surprisingly strong and   
even if not the evidence of the ease with which they broke in, not at   
all discouraged when splinters or glass fractures penetrated them, as   
I have also seen their hands smashing windows and reaching out for me   
as I ran in the corridors, having struggled against them, told me   
about it.  
It was only as I came into the room they started their moaning,   
reminders of once humanly voices, begging for help, a plea that I   
should let them eat me... I had come into a faintly lit anteroom to   
see them lingering at their feet close to exhaustion and their   
attention turned at me immediately as I was at sight. Hands stretched   
towards me yet I had no second thought, I felt no fear at their sight.   
I aimed and fired. Again and again and again, watching my bullets   
cutting off pieces of rotten flesh, hearing anguished woes of pain as   
they lost their means of perseverance but... I knew I enjoyed the   
sight.  
It's a feeling I cannot ratify, yet under the circumstances, I   
know there was no other way I could have reacted and survived as well.   
The counsellor I was advised to visit once I came back to the society   
told me that it was but a normal reaction to defend myself but I   
didn't need to get 'professional' affirmation to be convinced,   
although those sessions had helped me a lot. And still, when I was in   
there, surrounded by those monsters, I had too turned to a monster   
just like them and it was a matter of the survival of the strongest. I   
felt pure joy when shooting at the creatures I met, I even swore aloud   
as I caught them leaping on me in the air, spitting out as I killed   
them, enjoying the sight of them turning to incoherent masses of   
mutilated biological tissues... I can't believe myself then, even if I   
understand there was no other way I could have gone, as I know that if   
faced with an alike situation again, I'll do just the same. I'll grab   
a weapon and yell at those creatures when blasting off their heads.  
Chris had once said we were the same and it was only then that I   
discovered in me the same fascination of making my way through tough   
situations with a gun. As brutal as this state seems to me at present,   
I realise that I wasn't a human anymore when I was in it. I was but a   
beast, fighting for survival and I was no less than thrilled at seeing   
how I could protect myself.  
I wandered more within the abandoned building of the RPD, in   
seek of anyone living, only to find nothing other than desolation...   
The more I walked, the more I enjoyed the silence which was certainly   
more favourable to an encounter with anything moving, knowing that   
this would be a zombie, at best. I strained my ears to catch the   
faintest sound, a droplet falling, a wisp of wind, feet being dragged   
with unwilling despair, breath through pierced lounges and when I   
noticed them, I cautiously approached and aimed right at them. I   
didn't know until then that I had such a good targeting... or that   
firing could be so enjoyable... but then, I was following the law of   
survival however heartening as it was, I hope I will not have to   
experience ever again...  
I had already tired and wished to find somewhere to lie down. My   
eyes were sinking in my skull and the bowgun weighted on my shoulder.   
Still I walked on, the distant moans of zombies of the city now being   
persistently inside my ears... the faintest flicker of a shadow made   
me start and point a gun. How long have I been wandering in the police   
station? It should have been very late, perhaps even close to   
midnight, when I found myself at the second floor, where the planning   
underwent... before the entrance to the S.T.A.R.S. office.  
I found the door open and I went in... there was no sign of   
life... and then, I halted, almost losing it. Next to a desk near the   
far end, I saw Chris's brown leather jacket, the one with the little   
fairy, reading 'Made in Heaven'...  
I had only closed my eyes with my heart beating and weakly   
breathed out as I lost every hope to find Chris here anymore... at   
then I knew something really bad had happened, for Chris to leave   
without his jacket... I knew he took his jacket everywhere, even if he   
never told me. Besides, the thing had evident signs of being   
frequently used.  
I walked to his desk. I knew this was it at sight. It wouldn't   
be too hard to distinguish it anyway, since it reflected his   
personality to the detail: Disorder and a multitude of all sorts of   
things... His guitar was leaning nearby and I dragged up the memory of   
him, among the circle of friends, mostly scratching a rhythm to the   
tune, not that it wasn't effective, singing with passion even and   
there was no way he wouldn't get the rest to join him. I remembered   
him playing all the famous ballads like 'Stairway to Heaven' and   
'Nothing else matters', all those things self taught guitarists know   
and wondered if I would ever hear his notes again...  
I sunk on his chair, lingering upon it for some time, until I   
realised that a little more and I would submit to my tiredness. Just   
as I stood up I decided to pick a small notebook dressed in a verdant   
plastic cover. I recognised Chris's handwriting in it...  
Diary? I had never thought Chris would be keeping a diary, I   
always considered this habit to be strictly feminine, but it so seemed   
that I didn't know of the sensitivities boys learn very well to   
conceal... and of all the places in the world to be left here... Was   
he so disorganised or... had he really left in such hurry that he   
couldn't hide even the most significant things? Or was he so naive,   
thinking no one would realise what this plainly dressed booklet was?  
I started flipping through the pages, not without a distant   
sentiment of sweet revenge for his excavations through my personal   
things... I read what he had foolishly perhaps written down, enough   
details to incriminate, events I too recalled from hearing in the   
news, about brutal deaths in the mountain range in the vicinity of   
Raccoon City, events that were a fright for all of the world... but   
only now I was learning how Chris was into these events, how he too   
had experienced the unknown horror in those forests and later in the   
Mansion outside the city limits...  
All this time he went through these conflicts on his own, with   
no one to rely on and no one to tell... I understand now why he chose   
to keep it a secret far from harm's reach for his family but I wish he   
had at least told me of what he met. Probably things would have been   
different then but I doubt it would be safe for him to transmit such   
confidential information but I wish he wasn't acting so overprotective   
or maybe he had no way of contacting us, supposing he had wanted to.   
Chris never said to me or anyone else about zombies, neither   
that he had met them in his last mission, after which we heard nothing   
of him and his long absence being one more reason I intended to visit   
him. But I don't blame him for this. I have blamed him for several   
other things, like the decapitation of Molly, my huggable fat bodied   
doll with the two pink bobs of woollen hair and that innocent fibre   
thin smile, dressed in pink tartan dress, my childhood's bedmate, I   
have blamed him for snatching my candies when I was away and twisting   
my wrist when I cried my protests, that also being the reason hand   
locks have few if no effect against me, but I haven't blamed him for   
this. Had he transferred as much as a single word, then perhaps it   
would mean extermination of all of us...  
There was one more thing I found in this room and never detached   
from during that time. A grenade launcher. I was only at loss when I   
found it, but took it without second thoughts. At the first time I   
took it, I was weak to hold it and unaware of how to use it.   
Fortunately, it wasn't as hard as I thought. I found ammunition for it   
and took it. I felt a little more confident then...  
That was until the sound of activity startled me and my heart   
leaped in fright. I'm not sure if I was relieved it was just the fax   
machine, but I took the sheets that came out. Oddly enough, it was a   
fax directed to Chris...  
I took it all when it arrived and was completely shattered to   
read. It was the first time I ever heard of chief Brian Irons.  
The chief of the Raccoon City Police department was extensively   
described in these three sheets of paper that made me wonder exactly   
how much sense my brother had to request such information. The fax   
confirmed Irons's connection with the activities of Umbrella in the   
remote mansion dating one month ago and along it attached a warning   
when dealing with him, describing him as extremely dangerous... It   
stated that Irons had underwent psychological therapy for   
schizophrenia during college but I had especially marked the part of   
him being accused of two rape cases... I don't know why even during   
the hardest times every woman dreads rape the most but I really wished   
I would never come to meet him. In fact, I thought he was too wicked   
to be around Chris as well.  
Chris had lately verified my suspicions and for one thing, I am   
glad Brian Irons was dead. People like him shouldn't be left wandering   
freely about...  
I might have stayed there forever, had it not been for a scream   
outside the room. It was the shrill voice of a small girl but I knew   
at hearing it, it was someone still alive... I ran outside the room   
and that's where I first met Sherry.  
She was pursued by a zombie when I met her. Her left leg was   
scratched; that zombie must have grabbed her as she walked by it,   
thinking it was dead, like zombies sometimes do. They lie down from   
exhaustion, I don't think they're smart enough to feint, as it is very   
hard for them to get up once they fall down.  
The zombie was wearing the clothes of a policeman... maybe   
Sherry had believed it to be a helpful one instead but it so turned   
out that it wasn't. I heard Sherry's desperate call for help and   
thought it was a good time to try the launcher...  
"Hey you!" I shouted and even now I don't believe at the   
strength of my voice. Sherry ran off and the zombie turned back at my   
direction... His long, nearly skinless hands reached out for me, it   
moaned in despair and the grenade launcher faced it...  
I pulled the trigger and while using all my strength to resist   
to the push, I saw right before my eyes, the thing blasting to rotten   
pieces of flesh. I stood still looking before me at sizzling pieces of   
decomposed human parts and then, filled with the power of the   
cognisance for the weapon at hand, I looked for the little girl. She   
was gone.  
There were few ways to go and I went ahead. I didn't find   
Sherry, but I was certainly very glad when after going through a door   
I met Leon...  
He was alive and well, startled at having heard the sound of the   
shooting... His eyes met mine and yet... however happy as I was to   
meet him, I had nearly ran and embraced him, he retained his   
composure... but for one thing he looked pleased himself... He had   
seen Sherry running past him but she must have been too scared to stop   
at another standing entity that had really few chances of being a   
human and the loud blast of the shooting startled him and he didn't   
manage to see where Sherry had run to.  
We talked some more but... neither the atmosphere or the   
closeness helped build a romantic atmosphere and therefore, all we   
talked about were our worries... I told him about my brother and how I   
knew how I wouldn't find him and he was encouraging... We then decided   
to go on. I had to find Sherry. He would find any at all survivors and   
an exit... in a last act, he gave me a radio and we parted... I didn't   
want to keep on alone, not right when I found him, but we would have   
better chances apart... and off I went to find Sherry.  
She was mighty lucky to make it through those halls unarmed and   
being so small, tired and frightened... Zombies everywhere, lickers   
lurking in the shadows and every other animal, dogs, cats, even crows   
and rats being transformed to ferocious beast... As I walked in the   
rooms of this fortress hosting the RPD that now revealed all its   
secrets as it was unguarded, I was constantly more amazed and at the   
same time horrified at the mastermind behind all this...  
It was a long time after when I met Sherry once again. By then,   
I had seen more of the RPD than I wanted. Going straight ahead,   
following the direction I thought Sherry had most likely followed,   
after running along the first floor balcony, crowded with zombies, I   
reached at the far end and saw what was the explosion that had   
awakened me... A helicopter had crushed on the wall and its burning   
bulk blocked the way. I wouldn't care to stay any more, doubting   
Sherry would be around, had I not heard a desperate scream...  
It was the voice of a woman and it hollered with such anguish it   
tore right through my heart, mostly because it was a voice of someone   
still alive... I knew it couldn't have been Sherry, it sounded too   
maturely deep to be hers, but it was one more living, nonetheless.   
Therefore I made it my aim to find her as well...  
Survivors, that's all that mattered. I had promised that young   
policeman to do my best with the survivors and I would. I made it to   
the other end of the empty corridor and opened the door...  
A forlorn silence received me and I walked ahead, taking the   
turn I considered would take me around the helicopter. A cold drift   
hit me through a broken window but I knew there were no zombies who   
could climb up the wall and break in... or was I wrong?  
I skipped before the sight of a corpse lying in the corridor...   
the corpse of a policeman, his shirt red with blood... But then...   
only as I reached at him, bowing above his body...  
The sound of a crow snapped me and I realised the dead body was   
pecked to death... then, before I had a second thought, all at once   
the windows shattered and crows broke in, cawing, attacking me, mad   
like the birds of Hitchcock and I'm glad I didn't lose it but kept   
running, or I'd end up lying next to that other policeman... I made it   
safe to the end and though a door, out in the open. Sometimes I   
ponder, what would happen if I met a dead end instead? I'm surprised I   
managed to find an exit. I had run blindly, shaking my hands over my   
head, screaming, hardly looking where I went.  
For a little I panted with my back against the door when I   
realised I shouldn't stay much longer there either. I was outside and   
those crows could show up any moment. I had to act fast, unless I   
wanted another bout of pecking.   
I looked up. Ahead was the helicopter wreckage, still burning. I   
was at the roof of the RPD and looking up, I saw a water deposit, very   
common around Raccoon City. The idea came as a flash to my mind and,   
with all precaution and aching, pinched legs, I went towards the   
safety valve... As I had planned, turning it increased the pressure   
and the water spurted, showering the roof and the burning wreckage.   
Soon the fire was extinguished and though I didn't expect any   
survivors, I knew I had cleared my way.  
Curiously, I approached to see the damaged helicopter and the   
charred remains of the pilot... but it was no time to mourn over him.   
At least he hadn't turned into a zombie... I took whatever ammunition   
I found intact on him and a deep breath before deciding to go through   
the crows again.  
Most of the pesky birds had gone, for now. I ran past those   
left, over the dead body and went through a door I had neglected   
before, shocked at having seen the corpse... and found myself again   
out in the open. I went down some stairs and what a surprise, I found   
pots of a certain herb...  
I distantly remember my mother when Chris or I as children had   
chills or scraped our knees yet once more, powdering leafs of that   
herb and rubbing them upon the concussion or on our bare back... For   
the treatment of wounds it was horribly painful. It seared worse than   
iodine and secreted a nasty greyish pus but it healed fast and had   
saved us from many infections, regarding where we used to play, among   
old rods and all kinds of dirt... Alike effective it was for fever but   
somehow it made the lounges burn and even my father was hesitant when   
mother insisted he should let her wrap his neck with a plaster dipped   
in it. Mother's fingers ached whenever she prepared the most effective   
medicine of Raccoon city and I was really glad I had watched her   
making it...  
I picked up the herbs and it ached just to pluck them. But if it   
meant my survival, there was no question.  
Back in the building, the familiar moaning of zombies greeted   
me... I pushed the door open, blocked by the corpse of one of them,   
fortunately dead for good. The smell was horrible and with the sound   
of a lowly turning fan, came the susurration of dragged steps, nails   
scratching off skin and that hollow moan...  
I loaded the gun and advanced to the open door from where I   
heard the sounds. It was the main office, where all the penalties   
were arranged, where the calls were taken and even whatever few   
testimonies one could take for a crime in Raccoon City... and in   
there, tottering on their feet were the zombies... depraved human   
beings with their clothes torn off, if not by other zombies, then by   
themselves...   
Their agile noses scented me and immediately with fresh vigour   
they staggered towards me... They had no power to walk outside the   
room and yet at seeing me, new courage seemed to be born within them...   
I raised my gun and as I cleared the path, noticing how they   
were all wearing clothes of policemen, I realised that... the horde of   
zombies was... not anymore, but that horde was what had become of the   
survivors, those whom that young officer pleaded me to seek and   
rescue... Time had surely passed since they were attacked by the other   
unfortunates of the city, probably those whom they had taken in as an   
attempt to protect and what became of them now was something that by   
no means represented something that had survived life but... death...  
I didn't get second thoughts about firing at them. They weren't   
human anymore. There was no way they could ever be... I wouldn't   
sacrifice my life for some briefly living monsters who once might have   
had names like Robert, Henry, David, Jack... Instead I grabbed the   
bowgun firmly and aimed at each and every single one of them. Sorry   
Robert. I don't think your wife will see you for dinner. Henry, my   
regards to your possibly late fiancee but you won't see her again. And   
David, I'm sorry for your new-born baby. Goodbye Jack. The guys at the   
club will always be missing you... if they are still able to remember   
you...  
When the last of them was on the floor with the spasms of death,   
I ran over them, carefully not to step too close as they might still   
have strength to grab me. The more I walked, the trail of blood I left   
behind me only increased. I wasn't at all unhappy. Not even at   
thinking I hadn't saved survivors. They weren't very alive when I   
found them anyway.  
With my mind on Sherry and the scream behind the wreck I kept on   
going. On my walk I met again the licker that startled me earlier...   
That beast was in that long corridor, swaying closer to me on the   
floor. It looked like those small lizards that are found in houses,   
the ones with skin so thin you can see their veins and the back of   
their eyeballs and if you slam them and miss the tail it'll vibrate   
for a while... This thing moved similarly towards me, hissing at each   
cautious step towards me, I almost believed it was smiling...  
I wasn't the scared person anymore and had a grenade launcher   
hanging on my shoulder. I dismantled it cautiously and turned it upon   
it.  
"Heeere baby!..." I hissed and aiming once, I shot it and hit   
right on it... I was amazed at its resistance. It was thrown away but   
even if much of it was seared, it still advanced blindly towards me,   
faster again and its hand scratched me. I staggered away in pain and   
horror, for I doubted it could last... In a horrible shriek it leaped   
in the air and... I fired the launcher.  
The licker landed heavily upon me.  
I screamed and struggled to remove its weight. I was out of   
mind.  
I managed to throw it off, only to understand that my last shot   
had killed it... I had been really fortunate but still its claws had   
scratched me... But I was properly on my feet, picking up my weapons,   
dirty with harmful organic fluids and hurt. I coughed and took out one   
green herb... I rubbed my wounds and then my hands. It hurt like hell   
but knowing it was the only way to remain alive, I applied it with   
gladness and then, when I was done, I took the rest of it with me.   
Sherry should have a few injuries that needed treatment as well... and   
surely fast too.  
With these in mind I begun the search for something to break   
down the wreckage. I knew how to make explosives, crazy Chris had   
shown me how... We had been really reckless children, I'm amazed we   
didn't blow anyone or ourselves apart...  
It was such irony that I found the explosives in the office of   
that young black policeman... and he was there as I came in... only...  
He wasn't human anymore.  
I saw him having lied against the wall... he tried to get up and   
I walked closer... only to see the horrible face of his mutilated, the   
skin having started to erupt in nasty bluish bubbles... He reached out   
for me, moaning in forlorn despair...  
I shut my eyes and fired at him. I heard him suffer but he had   
fewer options otherwise... as did I. Soon he went down for good.  
I went back to the wreckage with a makeshift bomb. On my way I   
met nothing but dead corpses I had shot or perhaps others Leon had   
successfully dealt with, but like I said, I preferred the silence. I   
placed the bomb by the wreckage, not knowing if it was a wise thing to   
do, as it might only release worse monsters but I had to see if anyone   
was still alive behind it. Therefore I placed the bomb, hid behind the   
wall and covered my head clinging to the wall to shelter myself from   
the explosion...  
I had been surprised to find an unlit corridor behind that   
wreckage, fortunately empty. Gun at hand I walked along, not knowing   
what to expect. The wooden floor had suffered and creaked awfully at   
my steps. A cold drift made me shiver as I walked to reach at the very   
end before a door that oddly enough had a mat before it...  
The door didn't resist when I turned the handle and I stepped   
inside. There was light on in the large office I found myself.   
Everything blared of luxury. Carpets, furniture, every ornament... but   
none of it was the reason of my horror.  
I dragged my steps towards the other end, at a large desk, but   
the one sitting behind it on a large chair with his back facing the   
door hardly attracted my notice as I saw before me the one who had   
screamed laying dead...   
She was wearing an evening dress with her hair done in lustrous   
curls up to her barren shoulders. A fine, lace-perfect cutting along   
her neck bled down her skin and on her golden hair... I recognised her   
as being Belinda Carlton, daughter of the city's doctor... We went in   
the same school and she was the mrs perfect. She had top marks and   
with her golden hair and blue eyes, she had secured the attention of   
all boys. Even Chris liked her and seeing it annoyed me, he kept   
bringing up the subject as often as he could, either by directly   
asking me if I had seen her or by startling me, having stealthily come   
up to me and jut forth her name... I bitterly hated her for having   
nearly everyone's attention, for smiling that grin whenever a mob of   
admirers ran to her aid, carrying her books or just starting a false   
fight for her...  
The feeling was pungent and for a little I felt as though I   
partially was to blame for it... not for any reason other than wishing   
the worst for her when I was young... Although I too made some heads   
turn, I remember hating her in my years of adolescence, maliciously   
speaking about her with my friends, as her premature femininity   
bloomed, so much that her mother would have envied her, but never have   
I wished for such an end for her... Yet there she was, Belinda or even   
'Belle' Carlton, Raccoon city's beauty, lying dead and it begun coming   
to perception that it was her makeup preserving her healthy colour...   
Such was my horror at the sight that when the other person in   
the room behind the turned back of a big chair turned around, I was   
completely startled. He was pointing a gun at me and right now I'm   
only glad he hadn't fired.   
I nearly skipped at facing him but having been able to compel   
that startle had probably saved my life. I don't want to think what a   
spasmodic reaction might have initiated. I had been paralysed instead   
and fixed my eyes upon chief Brian Irons in person.  
Narrow, nearly emotionless, yet absolutely sentient eyes looked   
at me behind his glasses. He did indeed look like a psychopath who   
enjoyed tying women on a bed and torturing them with his sexual   
fancies... I don't know if it's us women thinking of this for any man   
who's looks don't fit in our approval or, whether these people have   
lost respect for even themselves and therefore, because of neglecting   
their appearance, turn to look at something like Chief Irons but then,   
it was beyond this. I've seen many fat, even greasy people, father was   
fat too but it was on Chief Irons's face. It had this strange cold   
look upon his small eyes and that gluttonous firm anger upon his plumy   
face, I'm not a psychologist of psychic but I shivered from something   
that was like a warning. It was something about him that thoroughly   
frightened me and even if I couldn't explain it, I couldn't deny it   
either...  
The gun lowered but the stare remained and I wasn't sure if I   
ought to breathe out. There was still room for one more corpse beside   
Belinda. I was caught in surprise to hear him talking to me as if I   
was someone who had come to the office for a routine matter, as if the   
living death wasn't crawling around the building.  
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry..." he had said... "I thought you were   
one of them."  
Trying to appear similarly casual I regained my speech.  
"Are you chief Irons?" I carefully asked. He lied back on his   
chair.  
"Yes, that's me..." he replied. Something about his voice was   
too out of place... it had that insane quiver, compelled before taking   
over and making the speech an insane ranting like the last time I had   
heard it... Still you couldn't trust it. You just... you couldn't.  
"And who might you~..." he started but immediately he got a   
change of mind. "But never mind. You'll soon die like all the rest..."  
Such was the confidence of his words that despite all my will to   
resist it, it repressed me greatly...  
I had no words to say as my head sunk from sorrow. Before me I   
had the body of Belinda Carlton. There was serenity in her features   
and I know someone had wiped off the last face of agony she had   
brought...  
"That's the mayor's daughter." snapped me the voice of Irons,   
having noticed I was looking at her. I took my eyes from the dead girl   
back to him... So doctor Carlton had his ambition to become mayor   
fulfilled, I had thought and Irons regarded me with inimical   
indifference... as it wouldn't befit a death, as it wouldn't befit the   
situation we were faced...   
"I was assigned to protect her..." he had started, "...but I   
failed!... miserably..." he ended in a whine...  
Yeah, right.  
Not that it wasn't so obvious the poor girl had her neck cut   
through from a calculated blade and I only hope that whatever Irons   
did to her was after she was dead so, if nothing else, she wouldn't   
feel it... but then, I think I ought to be glad he wouldn't shoot me   
as well...  
I struggled to hold back my disgust at that pathetic acting of   
amenability, even at such a moment as I shook my head in grief but   
mostly to convince Irons that I bought his story. My life depended   
upon it.  
"Just look at her... nothing but sheer beauty... Her skin   
nothing but perfection..."  
I had nearly retched at his description and only hoped he   
wouldn't get a maniac rush of honesty and declare, before shooting me,   
his fascination about her to the detail... I wouldn't be able to take   
it...  
"But she will soon putrefy... and end up just like All the   
rest..."  
I snared my forehead.  
"There must be some way to stop it..." I said, hoping that   
perhaps somehow he knew indeed...  
He rested back on his chair, his insanely calm eyes studying me   
and I feared he could sense my fear...  
He took a breath like a doctor before speaking.  
"Theoretically speaking... yes. Either... by putting a bullet   
through her head..." he said and pointed his gun at Belinda's temple   
but without intention to spoil the face of his sleeping beauty... "or   
by decapitating her." he ended, turning back at me.  
'Yeh... you had almost been there... Sorry to interrupt you',   
was all I thought. Belinda's blood hadn't dried upon her skin yet.  
His eyes deviated from me to the wall where stuffed animal heads   
gazed blankly at us... I followed his stare...  
"To think that taxidermy used to be my hobby..." he mused and I   
sunk in cold worry at realising what exactly his plans for the poor   
girl were... Now I'm only glad I didn't get to see it!  
"But not any longer!" his voice snapped me back and his lips   
quivered as if ready to cry in this paranoid way. I gulped in anxiety.  
"Please..." he said with a tone of royal decadence. "I want to   
be left alone."  
Not that I really minded either... I slowly took a step behind   
and left the room, never turning my back at Irons who sat on his   
chair, looking distantly but each second watching my moves.  
I swear, when I got out, in the heartbeat and difficult   
breathing I had, I started running.  
Only as I left the corridor did I stop, afraid to try either   
turns, considering. Still I hadn't realised what Brian Irons had meant   
by 'one of them' when he had pointed his gun at me or why he didn't   
shoot me at once. He surely didn't expect a zombie, as zombies cannot   
open doors facilely and even if they do, they can't clear a wreckage   
blocking their way with a bomb... Irons surely meant someone living,   
someone intellectual...   
Someone like Umbrella.  
  
  
  
[ To be continued ]  
  



	2. Life, Death or somewhere in between - Pa...

A Chronicle to Downfall   
by Sapfarah ( sapfarah@geocities.com )  
http://www.geocities.com/sapfarah.geo/chronicle.htm  
  
  
Chapter 2 - Life, death, or somewhere in between: Part.2  
  
I didn't know of the conspiracy then, not that knowing would   
make any difference to me, praying to leave this godforsaken realm of   
horror as neither had I even believed that I would have to deal with   
it in the future... All that mattered was getting away from all the   
madness, away from Irons and back to safety.   
I found myself back outside the corridor, not taking any   
decisions. I only walked on reaching as far as the wreckage. It still   
steamed and smelled of ash and cinder. That was when a door opened   
hastily and slammed back...  
I knew it was the door of the corridor I had come in but I   
didn't offer myself the margin to think further, instead I run past   
the wrecked helicopter and hid in the shadows... right as I did, I   
saw what it was that had startled me.  
Sherry.  
She was running with all strength her little feet carried and   
headed right towards Irons' office. I snapped at the perception but   
by the time I realised, she had run past me and made it to the   
office...  
"No, wait!" I shouted. I didn't want her facing chief Irons and   
the sight of a slain girl on his desk. I rushed after her but she had   
entered before I reached so I was forced to once again storm into the   
office, gun at hand just in case...  
I forced the door wide open and halted back in total surprise   
not because of what I saw, rather what I didn't... there was no one   
in the room. No Sherry, no chief and no dead body lying on the   
desk...  
I walked inside, pushing gently the door behind me. I called at   
chief but I received no reply as I paced on... It was as though there   
was nobody in a range of kilometres and whereas the zombies were an   
actuality, I had the scars to prove it, I doubt what I had seen was   
an illusion or even a holograph. I knew I had seen chief Irons and   
there was no way he had just escaped through a room with no exit   
other than the door I entered, unless he was a ghost and walked   
through walls...  
I thought I had found my answer as looking back I spotted a   
door I couldn't have seen before, both because I had retreated on my   
back but because it was in the far end behind, very close to the   
corner, nearly hidden by a library adjacent to the wall before it, at   
the same level as the door whence I came in. Sure that Irons had gone   
through that door, I headed for it as well.  
I was greeted by a very dimly lit corridor where a cold drift   
was the only thing wandering. No sound reached me, either of anything   
dead or alive but I really wished for more light... I halted at the   
sight of a stuffed tiger, never thought tigers were that big...   
Fortunately it was only a stuffed animal or I'd have it badly. Still,   
the stuffing was very skilfully done, so perfect was the capture of   
the movement I expected it to leap alive on me at any moment and it   
wouldn't surprise me... I gripped at the grenade launcher but the   
glassy eyes of the amazing beast told me it could no longer move.   
I stopped despite the urgency of the time and padded upon it...   
stuffed. The fur was still beautiful...  
'Sick' I thought and really struggled to strain out thoughts of   
Belinda's ending as I moved on. The tiger's real eyes, somewhere   
behind bore upon my back as I walked but when I got to the end before   
a closed door, I wasn't sure I wanted the comfort of that option...  
Still I walked in... and had my heart rattling. Footsteps   
startled me as someone was running...  
'Irons!' I thought and my heart came to my mouth. Heartbeat was   
in my ears, I remember it as I remember my knees shaking while I run   
towards wherever would be closer to the running steps, closer to   
making the dreaded meeting occur and end the suspense once and for   
all...  
I never had a discerning ear as far as picking direction of   
noises goes. In that fright I couldn't tell anything more about the   
owner of the footsteps, other than it was someone living and...   
hiding from me... neither was I in position to evaluate these facts.  
I ended up in Irons' private collection room, well that had to   
be it. It was a plain, square room with shelves on every wall and   
exposition benches in a miniature copying of the frame the walls   
indicated to which they were parallel, all loaded with priceless   
items... there even were knight armors in one wall... I don't know   
how much all these cost but the feeling, under the dim light was   
just like the castles of horror in Count Dracula movies...   
Gun at shoulder level I run, tracing as best as I could the   
source of the footsteps. In fact I feel I somehow went the opposite   
way, until I met a gaping door and I knew whatever it was, had been   
there.  
I looked inside but couldn't see anything... In a hurry I   
searched the wall for a switch, staying in the dark was the last   
thing I wanted, praying all the while in a heartbeat that no licker   
or worse would jump to my face, although I don't see how the darkness   
would have prevented it... I hit the switch and in a slight relief I   
saw light. Bright light. And then... Sherry.  
She had crouched in a corner, shaking among her knees, behind   
her hands... Our eyes didn't meet, she didn't dare look at me as with   
a scream she jumped up and relied on her speed to get past a zombie   
she had believed to see in me...  
I was faster and as she tried to go past me I grabbed her by   
the hand. She screamed and tried to pull away and it was hard to hold   
her, even if I'm relatively strong, even if she was only a little   
child... Fear has this ability to amplify strength...  
She screamed to be let go and in a voice as assuring as I could   
I talked to her, telling her that I was not a zombie, something not   
very easy to notice if you're a small girl, tired and scared out of   
your mind... in fact nobody would have noticed the detail anyway...   
Depending on how far the mutilation has advanced, at early stages   
zombies don't differ too much from a healthy human...  
Struggling to hold her and make her hear me, finally I caught   
her attention... She stopped for a little and looked up to me...  
She had blue eyes and a healthy even if very well off face that   
showed fatigue and fright only too clear... Our eyes met and as I saw   
she wasn't struggling, I let go of her hand...  
I...  
I assured her she was safe and then.... she run to me on her   
own and wrapped her hands around me, weeping in relief...  
I've never been exactly fond of children, I've never been moved   
at the sight of healthy infants or chubby babies like the majority of   
girls... but when Sherry held on to me in what I can only ascribe as   
reliance, when she asked for my protection without words, trusting   
her fright on me... something changed...  
I still don't know what it was but I only held back at her,   
stroking her short flaxen hair and I knew that I would sooner die   
than permit harm to her. Even to this day, my feelings haven't   
changed.  
My hand brushed at the hair of the weeping girl, sensing   
through her tremors the horror of running among the walking death in   
a hostile city that used to be her playground, afraid, tired and   
possibly having seen more horror than anyone could bare. I had to act   
fast if that meant both of us would remain alive.  
Immediately I radioed Leon. With my mission accomplished, I had   
to meet him and leave this place together...  
It's odd that I was so confident he would pick up my call... to   
think about it, I had no clue as to how he was doing and only now I   
think of the dreadful possibility... Yet Leon answered back at me and   
with all sorted out, I kneeled before Sherry and trying to sound   
calm, I asked her about what she was doing here. Her answers were too   
simplistic, too confused, as would be from a child less than her age   
and she kept her eyes down, even though at that time there wasn't any   
need for being formal to strangers... She said she was out to find   
her mother who had instructed her to come to the police station...  
She never mentioned her parents' names but they wouldn't mean   
anything to me then. I still thought it was odd that anyone would   
advise their child to go out in a night like this as it stroke me on   
why they had insisted she headed to the police station... I was more   
or less convinced by then that whatever went on, the answer was in   
the RPD... Sherry spoke about her worries about her father whom she   
searched... and I think I can reconstruct the situation now...  
The incidence in the lab. A worried Annette calling at her   
daughter, doing her best to sound assuring, asking her to come to the   
RPD, k n o w i n g that her chances at home were slight... Sherry   
understanding something is wrong, somehow discerning that her father   
is in danger...  
The more Sherry talked, the more impatient she turned... and   
then...  
I should be glad the roar heard was distant then but that was   
by no means a comfort. It was a feral sound, very loud as to make one   
shudder by the mere echo of it and somehow it still wasn't   
mindless... It still held one emotion: vengeance and desire to   
slaughter and in this wild wail, it directed a heinous call to its   
victim...  
I don't know if Sherry was simply ignorant or brave beyond my   
grasp or hers alike but at the sound of it, she protested about   
having to find her father and sprinted away from me, so fast as was   
impossible for her little feet and her tiredness to carry her and I   
couldn't even halt her...  
I had lost her to her ultimate dedication to her father, a   
father who evaluated her less than his creations, even if I find it   
hard to accept but who had showed her compassion enough to urge her   
seek him despite the dangers... maybe hoping he would be a shelter   
she could rely on...  
I hadn't met Sherry until a lot later. By that time I saw more   
than I wanted of the corrupt building. I had found the way to the   
basement and to more zombies, more lickers and dobermans kept in the   
police department, only loose and infected with that virus that   
instructed mindlessly attacking and endeavouring. I saw death more   
than once coming before me, at my dizziness or in the form of the   
walking cadavers. Yet I survived. I was always at attack's readiness,   
always armed, always ready. Not for a minute did I let fatigue   
overcome me. Not that I had the margin of choice either.  
Only one thought persisted, that of finding the escape, that   
from what I had already realised, had to be through the sewers, or at   
least, that's how the last survivals planned to leave the city. It   
was too late now, the sewers were most certainly infected but I was   
armed and the knowledge that they were the only possible escape made   
it look like a joyride. Fortunately I was in the Police station where   
I found plenty of ammo to replenish my resources. Now if only I could   
get there...  
I had thoroughly explored the basement and there was no way I   
could get there through it. Yet the fortress of the RPD surely had   
some hatch leading there, one that possibly wasn't very obvious, like   
every secret escape ought to be, one that only the high-ups would   
know...  
And the thoughts rushed into my mind in less than a moment.  
A passage that high-ups could control ~ Irons a high up ~   
vanished from his office mysteriously~  
Irons' office!  
It was absolutely clear to fasten and there was no other   
option. I had to re-examine it, certain that I would be rewarded...  
A sharp sound of breaking glass told me that the sooner the   
better. I was on the ground floor and from windows in a room not too   
far from where I was, shattering and groaning told me that soon the   
hideout I had selected wouldn't be safe much longer. I went through   
the external staircase, rushed past the turn to the crow's passage   
and directly to the corridor of the wrecked helicopter... Right into   
the other hidden corridor towards Irons' office.  
That was where I found Sherry again.  
I don't know how she had made it but I'm only glad she did. She   
was there and this time, she even showed she was glad to see me...   
boy, I was too... I wouldn't leave the building without her. I'd   
sooner die than leave her behind...  
Ignoring her for the time being and for the best of both of us,   
I went to the desk, looking for a handle of some sort, perhaps a   
pencil container that when you flip to the side reveals an opening, a   
secret key, a rotating object... I only found some more cartridges,   
which I more than eagerly took.  
Now what was the other most common way of unlocking doors?  
Pictures. And there was a picture behind his armchair...  
It had occurred to me that Irons was a collector of art, only   
his taste surely had a very odd feeling. A particular one he had was   
a real work of art, depicting in great detail a fine body of a hanged   
person, most certainly a man, because the naked figure had no breasts   
but was too lean either, still a hanged person in such a morbid   
background is by no means art. Art is supposed to soothe the soul,   
isn't it?  
The picture I gazed upon was blunt brushwork to what might have   
been a girl in a growing jungle... Nothing that looked like a code   
was depicted on it...  
Looking at it, I noticed that there was something odd about it.   
A fine layer of dust on its frame had four oval shaped disruptions at   
one vertical side and four more in even distance at the opposite   
side...  
Sherry came closer, watching me as I tried to unhook the   
picture but it wouldn't budge until accidentally I pushed it to the   
side... It slid and revealed the pattern.   
It was an odd board of carved stone with three inlets that were   
very befitting to the collector: One for a sacrifice, one for the   
pouring blood, the last for the acceptance of it, in the form of   
endeavouring by a savage animal... The inlets were in the shape of   
rectangular stones that when put, closed a circuit that in turn   
supplied the mechanism with the power to reveal the door...  
Looking to my right, among stuffed animals, I saw indeed the   
three stones in question, the ones I hadn't really marked the first   
time, thinking, or rather not considering to, as they blended with   
the whole decor... I took them and noticed the inlets at their   
base... I placed them in the order and to my surprise, indeed a   
portion of the wall shook and retreated inwards to then slide behind   
the rest of the unmoved wall. Bingo.  
I poked inside. The area was cold, smelled with dampness and   
only an elevator was at the end of that small, unpainted fraction.   
Surely the perfect dungeon.  
I told Sherry to wait for me to return. I had to clear the way   
before bringing her with me... She complied and yet her eyes were   
doubtful, full of so much worry... but it was for the best and I know   
it now.  
The elevator screeched infinitely as it went lower down below.   
At least I was heading the right way. When it stopped and in all   
precaution I pushed the door away, I knew I hadn't been wrong. A   
proper medieval dungeon greeted me, dark and lit with torches on its   
walls built of thick brick... Maybe there was a ghost in that mansion   
afterall.  
I walked, hoping that I would be fast enough to see whatever   
would attack me in these corridors when I was startled by a rough   
roar. I knew it was the same I had heard earlier while in Irons'   
exhibit room. I looked around but the commotion nearby was not at   
sight. I heard a human scream, shouting and things banging, then   
another roar, this time deeper and the banging of a large plate of   
steel... The roaring seemed more distant and the corridor wasn't   
reverberating anymore.  
A grenade launcher was hanging at my shoulder. I had one last   
cartridge and wouldn't admit as much as one round go astray.  
A perfectly appropriate door was at the end of the way ahead, a   
rough wooden one with iron decorations and rivets. There was no other   
option to go by, so I entered.  
In fierce agony I felt the coldness of the room and along the   
stench of death I'd by now recognise anywhere. Bending over a corner   
of the room was chief Brian Irons who at the sound of the door stood   
up and...  
It was his private room where he did the taxidermy business of   
his... Now that I remember, there was no trace of Belinda's corpse   
anywhere and it stroke me as bizarre, even in such an inappropriate   
moment...  
He huffed from tiredness and was apparently under shock, after   
having fought against an abomination and sparing his life for some   
more...   
I gazed blankly at him and this time he didn't bother with   
pretensions... He started chuckling and his words were a bizarre   
complement, congratulating me for my success, then turned into   
raving, proclaiming my doom... I tried to talk some sense to him but   
he cocked his gun at me instead and the memory of Belinda attacked me   
as I backed away.  
Babbling insanely, whimpering even as he talked of the demise   
of the town, his town as he had the nerve to call it, he advanced and   
knowing I was as good as dead I asked him. I demanded to know it all,   
everything about what happened, the mutilations, the disasters, the   
zombies...  
...and I learned. I found out about Umbrella, the   
pharmaceutical company specialising in biological weapons, concealed   
by government factors as well. I found out what it was to hunt Chris   
when he vanished and what was that had destroyed my town... but I   
also found out about Sherry, who was the daughter of the ones   
responsible for the catastrophe...  
It was from Irons I first heard the name of William Birkin, the   
creator of the G-Virus and one of those who worked on completion of   
the first mutagen, the T-Virus, an essential substance for project   
Tyrant, Sherry's father. I was meant to find out much more about him   
in the future, but that day, as I heard about him, I never thought I   
would get to meet him so soon...  
It surely wasn't a meeting to be happy about.  
Once Irons blurted everything out, his gun pointed at my   
forehead once again. I remember his eyes glistering fervidly as his   
hand shook from anger but surely wouldn't miss from so close. I felt   
the sickening coldness of fear as I backed away, my back being   
blocked on the wall and the barrel of the gun almost touched me...  
Then came the roar once again and I realised it was very   
close... nearby below...  
A hatch was next to where I stood, over where Irons was bending   
when I had entered but I didn't see it, until the lid was forced away   
by a violent shove that in horror I knew was one conscious, as   
neither did I see the ugly hand that was shot from inside there and   
from some twisted luck missed my leg and hauled Irons' instead...  
Irons vanished from my sight and I backed away, watching the   
hole endeavouring him and then all I heard were his desperate cries,   
grisly roars and sounds of... being torn apart...  
I moved hesitantly, pointing the launcher at the hole but the   
hollering ceased very soon... I bowed, trying to see into the   
darkness below and, once again, I was dreadfully lucky...  
Something shot up through the fallen metal covering and as I   
backed off at time, I saw...  
What forced the metal plate away was nothing else than Irons'   
maimed upper body...  
I nearly threw up.  
He was ripped apart by sharp protrusions that came into his   
abdomen and pulled his pelvis apart from his stomach. He was covered   
with disgusting fluids that I don't even want to know what they were   
and the piece of meat he now was continued bleeding...  
Again I knelt over the opening, I saw nothing. Carefully I   
bowed and then I noticed the ladder... I had made it.   
Overfilled with pride and cognisance that I had some of the   
merit Chris jocularly called 'the Redfield bug' which he claimed had   
been our leading instinct to safety, having entirely forgotten the   
roar and Irons cut in two body, I descended the ladder to find myself   
underground. It was even colder and I landed on a griddle but... I was   
not alone.  
It looked like a human, or rather what the hunchback of Notre   
Damme should look like. It had the hunch for sure, covered in a   
dirtied white shirt, his legs, still wearing the comfortable flat   
shoes matching the trademark, studiedly disordered dressing code of   
scientists, had the limping that might have been tiredness, most   
certainly from difficulty to manipulate the new body he found himself   
into. Or rather, inability to adapt to the changes he went through.   
Ingenious as he might have been, he was paying for his folly now. The   
G-Virus, however powerful as it makes the 'host' is a very unstable   
organism. It has extremely fast growth rate but it's life span is   
about three days. It has to propagate to another 'host' to continue   
living. That, William Birkin didn't know when he injected it to his   
body, perhaps not even as he was slowly transforming to a living   
corpse, a degeneration of himself, deranged and doomed. And even if   
he did, he was no longer fit to evaluate it. He was a slave to his   
own creation and became the monster he created. This is how I saw him   
that day.  
The moment I landed on the platform, I saw the man in the   
distance, walking away in the slow, tired pace of his, with an iron   
rod at his hands, upon which were stuck bloody pieces of intestines,   
most certainly what had once been the guts of chief Irons... I knew   
better than call out at him, for either mutated beings or even   
unharmed didn't make sense any longer, but he sensed me and halted...   
The G-Virus accents the senses, among other things...  
He looked in a mess. But I had seen worse. And would see worst.   
One of his shoulders was disproportionally bulged to the other, it was   
already elongating... half of his face had turned to the colour of a   
rotten apple and the eye left untouched by this transformation, had   
turned under the lid and the iris was invisible.  
I had thought it was another zombie but if not the increase of   
body mass he had instead of lessening and the fact that he wielded an   
iron bat didn't prove otherwise, then certainly the eye that opened   
in his arm, surely did. The G-Virus acts funny, completely messing   
the generating factors of the organism but then, seeing a proper eye   
looking at me from a man's unnaturally huge arm didn't exactly   
frighten me. It was mostly the staggering yet steady approach, the   
blind intention to tear me like he had done with Irons and how, after   
I shot him once to end up his misery, he still kept coming...  
'It cannot be!' I thought as I fired another one, knowing for   
sure I was before the owner of that groan that echoed everywhere in   
the RPD. I just kept firing, his pace slowed more and by the time my   
cartridge emptied, he had folded in two... but he was very close to   
me. I thought he'd fall but instead...  
He leaped on his feet and threw all of himself behind the bar   
that hit me right on the head.  
I fell banging down on the platform, too stunned to even shout.   
Fortunately, and I mean that, all this momentum he had used, threw   
him over the reef and down below. As I opened my eyes, believing I   
would never again see the world, I was deafened by his roar as the   
void below swallowed him...  
I resumed myself, my head swelling awfully, looking for my   
launcher. I was alive, armed and ready. My head killed me but I was   
still alive. I had survived the beast and would survive Raccoon   
city... Then as my clear sight was restored, I took a better look   
around...  
The stench, the humidity, the meagre supporting   
constructions... Those were the sewers and I was there. I had made   
it!  
Such was my joy that I nearly leaped up the stairs, thinking   
only of getting Sherry. Again as I got to the wagering safety of the   
empty perverse room, I took a breath and a view of my surroundings.   
Disturbing stuff all over the place and what I passed for a table was   
in fact a bench to lay down the corpses to be stuffed... Blood was   
sprained upon it and once more I thought of Belinda lying on that   
bed, probably not all dead either... I shook my head and thought how   
appropriate it was for Irons to die in this room...  
To think that taxidermy used to be his hobby... But not any   
longer.  
Resuming my courage, I left and made it for the exit, thinking   
that behind me two evil people were wiped out of the range of danger.  
I didn't know it wouldn't be the last I'd see from William   
Birkin.  
  
Nothing had changed on the way back and yet, with every step I   
took, something inside me asked questions I didn't want to answer. My   
chief worry was how to pass Sherry through the splattered viscera of   
chief Irons. With all that foulness she had seen, here I was, worrying   
about her having to see the savaged upper torso of a dead man... No,   
that was not it.  
The doubt didn't form as thought into my mind until I stepped   
out from the elevator and in the complete silence I heard her anxious   
footsteps coming at me. And along with her, the realisation came. It   
struck me as she embraced me confidently and I mechanically stroke my   
hand on her head, staring down at her flaxen hair in the same shade   
with the tufts on the head of that abomination. In my mind I shouted   
she was not the same but my frightened heart told me otherwise. And   
all of a sudden, my hands were not clean enough to hold her. Would   
she trust me if she knew that only little before I shot down her   
father, however he had transformed?  
Actually, if my father turned into a beast, I'd as soon shoot   
him myself but some idiotic people stick to those bonds, even after   
such changes... yet it wasn't my father down there so, what rights do   
I have to speak? I still drove Sherry from me in reluctance and   
pretended everything to be all right... In much of a hurry I radioed   
Leon, still alive but so shocked I was to really talk to him that   
only after everything passed and we reached safety I found out that   
had he been able to, he'd have strangled me right then for taking   
such a rash decision, completely ignoring him... Somehow though he   
too understood my motives later on...  
So it was that I took Sherry and led her through the corridors   
safely to the sewers and to escape. It still was a long way ahead but   
all the while, Sherry faced me in confidence and I held her trusting   
hand in mine...  
If she were my own daughter, I wouldn't feel any stronger about   
protecting her.  
There are times to day, when I question myself on whether I'm   
entitled to love Sherry as much as I do and I know the feelings I   
hold for her to be strong and genuine. Still, I feel I don't have the   
right to. I say that I love her as though she were my daughter and I   
doubt I could love her any less, yet I can't stop remembering I'm not   
her mother and that I know things about her mother that I cannot tell   
her, perhaps ever.  
I cannot say positively whether by hiding harmful truths from   
her I can still say that I love her, even though my experiences have   
parted me from the commonly thinking crowd. So far, things have   
worked finely. When the day of the reckoning comes, I'll deal with it   
then...  
Maybe I'm not exactly planning my actions in the best way to   
leave a margin for the unexpected, but how can that ever be achieved?   
How was anyone to suspect that going off to meet their brother would   
alter their life and lives of the ones nearby in a nightmarish way?  
I have learned to take life as it comes, knowing I cannot do   
much against it and preserve a margin for more surprises. I don't   
claim to have seen it all with Raccoon City. In fact, I know there's   
more than lickers and rabid hounds to instil fear. In the few courses   
in criminology, in particular victimology that I took during my   
training to be a STARS executive officer, told me yet once more that   
I hadn't faced all fear in Raccoon City...  
Neither then though was I trusting anymore. It wasn't that I   
hadn't expected the sewers to greet us with more horror, only this   
time it wasn't in the face of a monster. Sherry and I lost each   
other, right as we succeeded in getting safe away from the RPD...  
We had just made it to the sewers, where, after all we had   
seen, walking in these stinking waters didn't make an impression...   
but what we saw looming over our heads certainly did.  
The footsteps echoed clearly enough to make us turn and I   
couldn't believe my own eyes, though I knew even then that I wasn't   
mistaken. It would be impossible to be errant on so an apparent truth   
but damn it, I had shot him only minutes before, I loaded his body   
with grenade rounds, he had fallen down a ravine and he was back   
again, walking as though nothing had happened?  
Sherry embraced me frightened out of her mind and called my   
name at doing so. Out of reflex I held her back but that monster   
above had sensed us and in horror, I saw it looking down on us over   
the shoulder... I still hope Sherry hadn't too looked up... I dread   
at the possibilities of her facing what was there...  
I very often wonder, did she recognise that thing to be her   
father? But I guess that's one thing I'll never know. I dare not ask   
her either... but I so much long to find out... I hope she doesn't   
carry yet one more aching memory...  
I had commanded Sherry to run. It was the sanest thing to do   
with a spent grenade launcher and a beast that just wouldn't die and   
still was Sherry's father. Luckily fear hadn't paralysed her and we   
both rushed to the iron gate that, fighting all disgust, I forced   
open and let us through.   
The door pounded behind us, leaving us both in one of the   
sewers stinking passageways but that treacherous quietness held far   
worse for us aside. Thinking back, first Sherry was next to me and   
the next moment, I heard her scream and felt the water drained with   
force at my feet...  
Sherry wasn't as lucky. She stood right before the lid and it   
opened, as if only to suck her and she went down to a lower level.  
It's not any less scaring thinking about it now, after all   
these years.  
She was very fortunate not to break her bones, get stuck in   
that hole or drawn. It's not entirely impossible to drawn in the   
sewers and luckily the level below wasn't much fuller than the one I   
was, at least for the time being. I certainly lost my courage at   
that...  
Sherry assured me she would be all right and since I couldn't   
go to where she was, I had to trust her and find another way to meet   
her. She went ahead, that brave little girl with only a first aid   
spray I had supplied her with when I met her again in chief Irons'   
office... Suddenly all came to my mind. The transformed monster at my   
hind, the zombies and Sherry, in the sewers. I had to rush and I did.  
I met more indications of G-virus infection in the sewers.   
Insects and awfully large spiders, spitting acid on me... no zombies,   
no lickers, no hounds loose. I don't want to think how Sherry would   
fare with her well off feet and totally unarmed against those beasts.   
But I also met another human being that still preserved life within   
it.  
I was in a large platform and rubbed some herbs on agitations   
caused from the acid of the spiders, when her footsteps startled me.   
I merely looked up and saw her cocking a gun at me. Of all the times   
to be caught with my panties down.  
She didn't have to introduce herself. Irons tirade before he   
died and how apparently she resembled Sherry, who had mentioned   
looking for her, gave away her identity. She had the same blonde hair   
like her daughter and perhaps, if I erased the circles and the   
acridity from her stare, she had the same eyes. She looked rather   
good for a scientist, compared to my physics teacher at second grade   
who was both crabby and ugly as sin and perhaps if she took better   
care of herself, she might have been a very attractive woman. If   
Annette Birkin was a teacher, she could have been every schoolboy's   
teacher-amour, only her methods had better been softer than a fifteen   
shell beretta...  
I stood up, despite her gun pointing at me and the threatening   
click of the revolver, yet once again. When Annette met me in the   
sewers powerplant, she was far more scared than I was but like me,   
she was playing all for all.   
Anyone else at my place would have been shot at once I bet and   
I know that what had in fact saved me was the magic echo in Sherry's   
name. Once I mentioned I knew her daughter, her face melted to one   
frantic and the reasonable woman gave way to an animal, following its   
instincts when it came to her daughter. I swear, had she been told to   
jump over to the other end of the balcony for Sherry's sake, she   
would and probably succeed to. The feeling is not one I'm not aware   
of...  
I told her how I was trying to get both Sherry and I into   
safety and she almost lost it when she heard how her daughter was   
caught up in such danger. Knowing better than accusing her for   
calling Sherry out in the first place, I said nothing. It's only now   
that I feel glad the call was made, or else Sherry would have been   
another more victim accounted for...  
This isn't a better consolation either as I'm sure there were   
more adorable people out there who unjustly lost their lives but   
sometimes, knowing you have succeeded in saving even one of them...   
it means so much...  
I didn't know how Annette planned to protect her daughter by   
instructing her to meet her in the RPD, but I have a feeling she was   
following orders from her husband who, at the moment of the crisis   
considered wiser to keep his daughter with him, lest his enemies or   
anything else got to her. A pretty reckless decision in either way   
but as I discovered, Annette was such a person that loved her people   
only a little too much to dare judge them. So much she confessed to   
me, not with words though...  
I still don't know what had urged her to confide in me, I've   
been told I have this 'gift' if that's what it can be called, for   
inspiring trust... To think about it, indeed I have many times lent   
an ear to those in need... only I'm not certain, having heard some   
confessions, whether I can still call that a gift, for me at least.  
Annette told me the unheard of tale of Umbrella and things I   
used later in my investigation. What I picked out most vividly though   
was the sadness of one family, especially a little girl's and a   
woman's who loved her husband only too much... There were tears in   
Annette's eyes when she told me how her husband injected himself the   
G-virus toxin and ever after she knew his track from the trail of   
blood he left behind, only hours before, perhaps right as I pulled   
along that Diner in the borders of Raccoon City...  
Annette was still in her proper senses to accept my suggestion   
to look after Sherry instead of holding a pointless argument but she   
wanted to go on her own. I think there were still things she needed   
to settle. Judging it to be the best, I conceded and ran almost   
eagerly, lest she'd change her mind.  
At the other end of the platform, I reached the high compact   
area, where the more I advanced, the worse it smelled. I was walking   
upon a path of metal in a seemingly empty corridor, when I wisely   
decided to avoid the metal, so to be able to distinct more sounds and   
not be detected... and indeed, a sound I heard. It was heavy   
footsteps striking upon iron bars. Ensuring I had loaded weapons, I   
advanced to the end, where it seemed all the sewage was gathered...   
It was beyond my expectations to find Sherry as I came before   
the opening to the compact area... I almost run to her but then saw   
in the far end the last of his legs as he was slowly climbing up an   
iron ladder, the beast that used to be William Birkin...  
I knew I was late and held back, only to avoid attracting his   
attention, not wanting to have Sherry in the range of a battlefield.   
She lied unconscious upon piles of trash and once I heard William's   
footsteps no more, I ran to her, through the dirty water with my   
heart in my mouth, and...   
I saw a worm, a foul thing sliding from under her... the   
incubating transferor of the G-virus...  
I didn't have to know that to know it wasn't something good and   
anxiously I shook her and called at her name...  
What I saw was a nightmare that will never leave me for as long   
as I live.  
Her face turned at me, too weak to get up, pale with fever, as   
if it was swelling and her eyes glistered, almost lifelessly like the   
eyes of a zombie... She shook all over, her lips trembled and I felt   
a sick warmth emanating from her...  
I almost went down crying.  
I couldn't forgive myself had Sherry died in my care, not to   
mention having gone through so much... I still beat myself about   
it... When I heard her calling my name with her voice so weak I   
considered shooting us both and giving an end to it all...   
Fortunately I maintained control of my actions.  
Sherry complained about her stomach, poor girl... poor, poor   
girl... I had to motion for her to get up. I had to persuade her to   
keep on, and myself alike, saying that there was still hope... More   
by instinct, rather than by knowledge I found the way to the trailer   
taking to the major secret lab of Umbrella, where all the experiments   
were started, where all disaster broke. Sherry and I went in, still   
not knowing where it'd get us, except that it would be away from the   
RPD and it was all that we wanted at the time being. In hope to get   
to the exit or at least some aid for Sherry, we took it. Yet reaching   
to the actual lab was a far more toilsome path.   
Sherry trustingly stayed by my side and even when we met   
zombies, on our way to freedom, she never left me. But all the way, I   
went with a drumbeat at heart and that wasn't just because of the   
zombies, that fighting them on my own was one thing and making sure   
they stayed safely away from Sherry was another. It was in Sherry's   
innocent eyes full of tiredness as she looked at me and in silence   
followed me. It was in the way her face was paling and how she forced   
herself to keep up to my already slow pace. I didn't pick her up,   
wanting to be ready to fight and carrying her would definitely lessen   
our chances. So I had her following me instead and dreaded that she   
would any moment fall down on me and that when I'd run to her, she   
would be dead...  
I was getting sick out of my mind. It had been long since I   
last heard from Leon, Annette was surely left behind for good and   
Sherry was almost faded. Only one thing followed us and it was that   
impertinent roar, pursuing us with impossible persistence...  
I battled William once more, if that thing could be called   
William at all, for it certainly wasn't even remotely human any   
longer. What the G-virus does to human beings is horrible. Before my   
eyes, head slipped down upon his chest, as if the scull had mollified   
inside his body and he wore his face as an ugly reminder on his   
chest, slowly mouldering to a disgusting blob and a new monstrous   
head replaced the necessity upon the new shoulders in fractions of   
seconds. I saw appendages growing from his mutilated body and sharp   
fangs protruding through these limbs of rotten, short-lived but   
lethal flesh. I saw toxic fluids oozing through his scars and smelled   
the stench of sulphur in his being. If nothing else, Umbrella has   
made some progress, as far as her transformations go...  
We were attacked by the monster while we were in a transacting   
platform, pulling us deep in the abode of hell, Umbrella's main lab.   
Making Sherry lie down, ensuring her it would all be all right, I   
checked my ammo and took all that I found on the way with me.   
Cautiously I stepped from the cabinet and looked for the bastard with   
mean vengeance. I had a child to protect.  
Sometimes I still wonder how come I survived him... I felt the   
cutting of the claws on my skin and more than once I saw my life   
halt, in an agonising, merciless repetition, during a fight with a   
virtually invincible agent of death. I had managed to shoot   
everything I had on him and again, the lump of biological tissues   
submitted... Once again the massive body fell from the rocking   
platform down on the level below. A sense of dejavu alerted me but I   
had hoped it was the end... I was so tired from that battle I didn't   
care and since there was no way I could find and verify it was all   
done, I thought it was all over. What mattered was staying alive and   
protect Sherry. Therefore, I dragged my steps back to the cabin,   
scarred but victorious.  
Sherry was there, trembling in fear and fatigue. I forced an   
assuring face as I walked to her, feeling her feverish forehead.   
Trying to appease her, once the platform stopped, I took her in my   
arms, for she no longer could walk and she wrapped her little hands   
around me as we decided to dare our exit to wherever we had reached.  
With Sherry in my arms, I walked outside, looking carefully   
around. The construction around us was immense, to tell the least.   
Based underground, made from concrete and stainless steel, simple as   
it could be was the Secret Laboratory of Umbrella in America. The den   
where all major experiments were conducted, where the mass production   
of the T-virus begun, where project Tyrant begun materialising, the   
core of Umbrella from where the RPD communicated with the mansion,   
now overrun by beasts and I had to find a shelter for Sherry in it.  
I found a cabin where a guard must have dwelled and ensuring it   
was empty from moving things and could be safely locked, I decided to   
leave Sherry there for a little more, until I could find a solution   
to our situation. Sherry was beginning to shake and as if it would   
help, I took off my vest and put it over her lean shoulders... I   
really don't know why this had touched her so deeply as to confess to   
me... It's so hard when everyone wants you to be strong... yet her   
words at those moments and her bashful admitting when she was   
suffering because of my negligence are the most pleasant burden I   
carry ever since. I will be strong for Sherry, whenever she needs me,   
I'll be there. Always.  
I didn't want to allow myself to be sentimental, not when I   
still had to fight, so I asked her to sleep and, locking the door   
behind me, I armed myself right on time.  
I had pointlessly roamed in the endless laboratory for a great   
amount of time, worrying about them all, Sherry, Leon, Annette... The   
place smelled medicine, foulness, however that is defined and mostly,   
decomposition. I too saw the ugliest zombies there. The G-virus was   
in much greater quantities in the laboratory, I even felt it   
alleviating inside me, therefore it was only natural that the process   
of putrefaction was faster to those. The deranged corpses walked   
naked, having started attacking each other in seek of nourishment,   
being more of walking skeletons with a little flesh on their bloodied   
bones. It is horrendous to see what the human body could turn to with   
the effect of the G-virus... Pieces of dark brown rotten meat hang   
from these things, the areas where hair were pulled lacked skin   
alike, they had large bite cavities and the stench was clogging... In   
one occasion, where I was surprised by one in a corner and nearly had   
to fight it in body to body combat, I saw thousand tiny _worms_   
crawling upon it and particularly a nest on its broken skull...  
I'm not that squeamish any longer but I haven't gotten over   
that memory.  
However fortified the secret laboratory was, it had submitted   
to the G-virus. The toxins were so abundant there even were gigantic   
plants eating up the building, pieces of it were torn off like hydras   
and roamed in the corridors, detecting and attacking me... I'm only   
glad all this went down in that explosion.  
I struggled against stronger mutations of the species in this   
building, where they were in advantageous environment, always in a   
hurry. I had to take Sherry out and FAST. It also was the last time I   
ever saw Annette again, while hoping for anything that could have   
helped, but the encounter didn't soothe my fears or gladden me, for,   
if not the virus, paranoia was beginning to overtake her. She walked   
threateningly to me with mean eyes and a vial at hand, raving about   
the G-virus, as her husband's legacy, as if it was truly some virtue   
worth preserving. This time, mentioning Sherry didn't work, but...   
the truth in the wild roar did.  
I don't know whether Annette was cognisant enough to know this   
was her husband or whether she dreaded for his well being but,   
somehow I think she was aware of the effects of the G-virus she had   
too helped into creating. So when the roar echoed, so distressingly   
nearby, in a flash through her paranoia, his name came to her lips   
and she run towards it...  
As soon as I realised, I grabbed the grenade launcher I carried   
and run after her but...  
I was late.  
I don't know if I could have prevented this. Although something   
alerts me against Annette's perseverance to life, a part of me still   
believes she should have survived, at least for Sherry's sake. But   
there's nothing I could have done for her. Before I reached the   
corner that her agitated speed carried her surprisingly fast, her   
desperate wail tore through my ears and I only reached right as   
Annette was falling at the slash of the top arm of that abomination.  
Before my eyes stood a behemoth of nearly eight feet in height   
with a hideous extrusion for head and four powerful clawed hands, its   
body entirely formed from decomposed matter and toxins. Annette came   
sliding at my feet, slashed open by a swing the hand had taken, right   
before my eyes, right a second before I arrived...  
"NO!" I screamed in frustration as I lifted the launcher to it   
but it hadn't noticed me or I don't know why it didn't stay back and   
fight, perhaps it still preserved some reasoning and c h os e not   
to fight me, instead it hopped with frightening speed and strength up   
and went through the ceiling above us.  
I stopped there, hollering with fierceness for the fucker to   
come back, wishing to slain him right there and stop the disastrous   
advance of his, but there was nothing I could do for it. In agony I   
came to my knees next to Annette...  
She was no more than a dying, slashed corpse with blood   
streaming from three sashes cutting through her body and bubbling   
from her mouth as she spoke... She was gasping for breath, but it   
seemed that with her life, she lost her madness... Regret and sorrow   
were in her voice as she strained to give me details about my leave   
and the recipe for the vaccine which she knew... but more than all,   
she bestowed me the care of Sherry... a load I still don't know if   
I'm fit to carry.  
Annette's memory is accompanied with deep sorrow in my mind, as   
a woman who was full of love for her family and never had the chance   
to offer it to the ones concerned. She was a woman who suffered under   
superficial values she had adopted and these only to preserve her   
loved ones to her...  
I don't know if I'm wrong to think of her like that but   
somehow, I categorise her to that group of people who weren't strong   
enough to admit to themselves what they did was wrong and were   
victimised by their very hopes...  
In shock I remained by her side as her last breath flied   
through her lips and only then did I get at my feet, clasping a   
bloody piece of paper with the recipe for the vaccine, to be   
flabbergasted by a voice. A digitised announcement from every   
megaphone of the forsaken laboratory, a lifeless playback of a   
feminine voice, loud enough to cover any other possible sound as it   
spoke.  
The self-destruct sequence had been activated.  
Although I didn't have the margin to figure out the cause of   
it, I had thought that William-mutant had accidentally triggered the   
procedure by destroying vital parts of the machinery. I didn't know   
then, neither had I cared to list my options. I only knew my heart   
that had skipped in my chest and my courage that slipped like steam   
through my soul. My limbs were shaking in fear as then I heard the   
repeated alert resonant sound. Shaking and with Sherry at my mind, I   
forced myself do what I knew I had to do.  
On my way to the laboratory Annette had directed me to   
construct the vaccine, I had passed by the monitoring room where... I   
saw Leon in one of the cameras...  
Again, I had not a clue. But I sensed it, even though the   
signal was so faint that it couldn't be identified as a warning. I   
simply sensed something was wrong and my subconscious told me it was   
a thing beyond the entire building falling apart, all over us. It was   
something different than our lives about to come to an abrupt end.   
Only it was so faint, so indefinite that I couldn't pick it up, so   
fleeting as was instantly dismissed... not to return until the time   
would bring it back again... but it was there and I had known it. It   
was only after that I finally found out about it...  
I saw Leon standing before what looked a metallic surface which   
seemed like the inside of an elevator to me, from which I believed he   
had made it and therefore I hoped I would soon meet him... He stood   
there, lost and startled and... I had assumed he had lost it because   
of the alarm he no doubt had too heard... But it didn't bother me. I   
had no time to think of that so automatically the thought was pushed   
on the back of my mind, as I told him about Sherry, begging him to   
look for her... I had worried him out of his mind once more, yet he   
conceded to my request, thankfully, and I rushed for the vaccination.  
I left masses of creatures that never lived behind me on my way   
with my heart drumming in my chest and yet, I have never felt   
stronger than I did that day in my entire life. With the vaccine at   
hand, I made my way to my only hope to the rest of my life, to the   
exit I was hoping to meet Leon with Sherry...  
My escape was through the power generation room. I run right on   
time, hearing behind me the last gate shut with a pound like a door   
of doom. With the annoying buzz of the warning I rushed to the   
platform right opposite of me, straight ahead, almost greeting me   
with open arms. I pressed the button to call it...  
...but something different came to me.  
I had completely forgotten it but it seems like it had roamed   
over the ceiling looking for whatever it was and when, somehow   
realising it was the end, it wanted to take me down with it, if so it   
would be.   
A pound came from the ceiling over me, then a second one and I   
retreated, shaking my agitated head in horrified disbelief as the   
roof crashed and it fell right before me with its arms dangerously   
spread. An ugly mutation. A disgusting moving grossness, loathsome   
beyond description, out for my blood.  
Fear flowed through my veins but the adrenaline constructed a   
more lethal cocktail. I was t h a t close to the end. Nothing would   
stand in my way. I run at first, wanting to get a clear distance to   
fight this mutation but I wouldn't let it get me. I wasn't fleeing. I   
was fighting with equal ferocity. It was more than personal. It was   
inhumanly violent and beyond reason. In that last battle against a   
mindless opponent, there were two beasts in that room.  
Running to get behind it and away from the menacing claws, I   
shot at it whenever I could, having the time, mercilessly chasing   
after me in mind. The mutagenic beast received my shots but instead   
of dying, it transformed to a different form of weapon, using up all   
its power in a desperate attempt.   
It looked like a grizzly with a huge sharp toothed hole instead   
of head, moving very fast howbeit awkwardly. It jumped upon the   
machinery, looming over me. The ugly mouth grinned but, however crazy   
as that was, I didn't run but instead I shot it. It hit and it reared   
in a reverberating growl and I shot it again. And again. It pounced   
on me and I run as it tried to munch me and turned back shooting...   
It screamed in frustration as it reached out for me but I wouldn't   
lose. Not now. Not when I was that close.  
Some have questioned whether killing those subjected to these   
biological weapons was a good thing. Jin had too objected, he had   
said that perhaps by studying them we could find a way to cure   
them... but idealism has never been me. 'If clauses' only hinder us.   
What is the point of imagining situations that never occurred?  
I do admit that the same questions crossed my mind from time to   
time. And frankly, I don't think killing the beast that had emerged   
from William Birkin's flesh was a crime. I doubt killing William   
Birkin at all should be handled as a crime either...  
Coming to think of it, would he have done so, had things been   
otherwise? Had Umbrella not betrayed him, had he not been shot and   
had he been recognised instead, for both his destructive inventions,   
would he still have chosen to try his innovation on a human? Perhaps   
not, perhaps I wouldn't be facing that beast then with a loaded   
grenade launcher; perhaps I would be facing someone else; the father   
of another child, the husband or wife of another person, or perhaps   
someone else, unarmed even would be standing against it... His   
creation was a weapon and Chris had once told me in the most accurate   
way possible, 'sis, when you carry a gun, you can bet you will fire'.   
William Birkin had created the G-virus to be employed as a weapon.   
Eventually... it would find its use.  
I never regret having shot William Birkin down, if there still   
are people who would associate that abomination with a human being.   
On the contrary, when I was fighting it, I was a beast myself,   
fighting for everything I held dear and wouldn't let go to a mindless   
failure of a dream. If asked to do it again, I'll point a grenade   
launcher at him, like I did that night when I held it with all my   
strength and fired. For Sherry; his own flesh and blood who's future   
he never gave a second thought when he sacrificed himself to his   
invention and whom he exposed to such danger, using her to propagate   
his sick vision. For all those unfortunate special forces members who   
risked their lives to protect the even more unlucky people from his   
insane experiments, those who only wanted to wake up each day around   
the ones they cared about. For Annette, who loved him to the end and   
the end it was. And lastly, one for me and my brother Chris and all   
of my hometown he had no right to destroy the way he and his team   
did.  
'Bastard!' is the only thing that comes to mind when I think of   
him, exactly like I had thought right then feeling absolutely no   
fear, nothing but anger. 'YOU are not standing in MY way!' I grunted   
and pointed the launcher at whatever he had become. One grenade. And   
another. And another. The launcher was pushing me back and I   
struggled to remain to my spot. The cartridge was over and I still   
remember my hands quavering as in extreme haste I discarded it to   
refill... I shot again right at his face, or whatever that living   
ravine could be called, again and again...   
The ground was shaking as its lumpy body jerked towards me,   
slowing down in pace but never in intention, until, finally... it   
left a desperate whiz as it collapsed and moved no longer.   
It was done.  
Or so I thought...  
I stood tiredly above the mountain of flesh, panting down on it   
when the platform had reached my floor. The ding startled me. It was   
the worst time to panic.  
In fear that the monster might come to its senses, or worse,   
something else getting me, if not becoming fireworks, I run like I   
never had but even as my knees shook from panic, I was strong at that   
moment. Weakness had left me for good and I dashed with a gun at   
hand. Nothing, nothing would get in my way.  
Nothing but fate.  
When the platform reached to the bottom, as I run ahead to find   
myself in a space scattered with unmoving dead bodies, I was dazed by   
an advancing light... The escape train had begun moving as I reached   
to the end, remainders of living corpses laying down before me. I   
looked ahead horrified and then at the train in despair, then saw   
Leon hanging from the window. Waving his hand he called at me and as   
the train speeded to the start of the tunnel, he went in, lest he   
lost his head from the edge of the wall.  
Fear spurs impossible courage in a person, bringing out powers   
one never believed he had. Right now, I'm glad I was triggered right,   
for the moment I realised, I could only reach for the last entrance.   
I run over the bars as well and jumped, like I had only in movies   
believed possible, straight into the balcony of the last wagon of the   
moving train, landing upon my shoulder and banging my back on the   
bars of that balcony. The sentiment that overflowed me with the pain   
was one I'd give anything to experience again... It was the knowledge   
of success, accomplishment and complete safety, all together.   
Right now I dread at the thought that it would take less than a   
moment of hesitation to end up in toasted shards and perhaps an inch   
to break the vaccine capsule. Fortunately nothing of the like   
happened but then, I didn't even consider those possibilities. I   
immediately got to my feet and run all the way to the first wagon to   
find Leon and with him Sherry, still unconscious.   
I run to her beyond my mind, completely ignoring Leon's rush of   
questions and right as the balance of roles had shifted between us, I   
once again cut him short, this time crudely too, as in haste I gave   
Sherry the vaccine shot. Leon kneeled silently by my side and   
watched...  
I vividly remember her ashen face, cold as the wicked death   
slowly became her, when her skin was glistering like that of a   
plastic doll, her face was deformed in weariness... I never believed   
I would ever see her coughing in bitter slobber as she was coming   
round...  
I think I cried when she called my name...  
Leon left us alone as he locked himself in the pilot's cabin...   
I didn't know why he did so, I thought I had offended him with my   
behaviour... how selfish of me...  
However, such was my relief to be able to speak to Sherry once   
again, knowing it was all over for her that I didn't bother with   
Leon... It felt odd knowing I had her trust offered to me and knowing   
what a valuable thing I had the task to take care of... but it was   
something I more than willingly took and when Sherry came to my arms,   
I embraced her back and vowed to myself that I would never let harm   
come near her again. Never.  
I still don't know how to describe my feelings towards her. I   
don't know if this is what they call motherhood but when I see her   
happy, I'm happy with her and when something threatens her, just like   
those days, I turn ferocious and ready to rip it all away...  
I love Sherry. Because, in the long run, if something has   
survived at all, if there's a reason worth fighting, that is her and   
the ones like her. Those innocent who dream of a peaceful life. Those   
who are dear to us and our power should protect and not destroy.   
Those who make our life meaningful and give essence to it...  
It was the end of our journey through horror. As the day was   
slowly breaking and Leon joined us again, the train approached the   
nearest city. In that trip I forced both of them to take the green   
herbs I had with me and was confronted with familiar protests, such   
as Chris and my father gave when my mother insisted they had to take   
the medicine. Men... they're so sad when they claim to be okay to   
avoid medical treatment...  
The train was programmed to stop about a mile outside the city   
limits, as it did... it was a bumpy halt but we were all safe, all in   
one piece. Tired as we were, we walked to the city and made it to the   
police station, under surprised looks of inhabitants, wondering where   
from us three had come, looking as though we returned from a war.   
We were received by the police who then notified the rescue   
services, once they understood it was all about the blast of the   
factory that had been noticed. We received medical treatment and   
Raccoon city's demise was shortly made public. STARS members reached   
the area and then underwent all the parts of the progress: the   
questioning, notifying our families and that's where the fight truly   
begun.  
  
The Umbrella case was filed and concealed but it wasn't meant   
to be for too long. Sometimes, even the most corrupt opportunists get   
fed up.  
For me, it was now personal. Umbrella was as much as my   
business and Leon too avowed to devote his life to its takedown...  
Access to Raccoon City was closed down for a good of four   
entire months, in which much more were revealed about its foul   
destiny. I finished my degree with a good average of 61 out of 100,   
which is not bad regarding and then I made my papers and send them to   
the STARS. Having had more than adequate experience and well, being   
Chris's sister, who was among the outstanding members, the answer   
came back very soon and positive.  
Chris emerged long afterwards, nearly six months later. He was   
alive and well, still with Jill and the same person I remembered;   
unharmed by the corruption he was faced with, Raccoon City's most   
wanted bloke with face of a baby and body of an ox, as I jeered him   
often and never thought I'd get the chance to, ever again... He   
showed up unexpectedly and when he walked through the door and   
shouted my name before grabbing me in a strong embrace, I knew it   
hadn't been all for nothing...  
I was trained to become a STARS member. My degree in   
engineering wouldn't be utilised much but I had other priorities. I   
worked alongside Leon, Jill and Chris, starting ahead in the Umbrella   
mission where I was unanimously selected to participate. I met the   
rest of the team. Barry, a father of two wonderful daughters, the   
guns expert and madly in love with his Colt Python Magnum that had   
saved his life more than he would tell; which he did either way,   
regardless; Rebecca, a girl younger than I was, expert in first aid   
and chemistry, willing to run everywhere for the sake of the mission,   
always having a smiling fresh, chattering attitude; Brad, the   
helicopter pilot who would never make it within the battlefield but   
was the sort of quiet person no team can do without and an excellent   
cook; all of us entirely devoted to Umbrella's ultimate takedown.  
One year later, as I had just reached the degree of sergeant,   
the Umbrella headquarters in Europe was wiped out, thanks to the   
courageous efforts of the remaining of the glorious Alpha and Bravo   
team...  
...  
I don't know if I should say things are all right now. Umbrella   
is gone... or so I thought. Or perhaps this is something totally   
different. But I can't believe I will see the day when I'll be able   
to say Leon's sacrifice didn't go for nothing...  
Leon's and who knows how many more...  
Sherry is now living with my family. She's attending high   
school and she is more than brilliant; daughter of two scientists,   
what do you expect? Mathematics submit to an enjoyable game and the   
riddle of Physics is a mere open door for her. I'm sincerely happy   
for her grades and seeing that she adapts well in her high school   
community, despite my fears that she might turn to be a loner. She   
has her friends and goes to parties like most every normal teenager.   
But will there ever come a time she may go to bed and not have to   
worry for nightmares to crawl in her head? And can I just sit back   
and be certain that, along with her brains, that other streak of   
ambition won't ever come out for yet one more raid of monsters?   
I push those thoughts back with each day passing, hoping that   
some things are perhaps a tiny bit too inhuman to come to life but I   
have seen the worst and I don't know what I'm eligible to expect.   
Each time I look at Sherry's face, even though the memory is slowly   
abating, I still see the ashen colour, I see her unconscious as she   
slowly develops the lethal embryo... And still, what if there comes   
one day when she will forget those memories and similar aspiration   
leads her to implant a malicious organism into another human? What if   
there still is one dormant fracture of that curse within her body?  
Sometimes, I still wonder whether she has fully recovered from the   
G-virus. Sometimes, hope is just not enough.  
  



End file.
